1941 / 2 Mercury Dime

A coin like that is commonly referred to as an "overdate" but it is technically a doubled die with the die being created using two hubs of differing years. True overdates involve hand punching the year into the die, which was 18th and 19th century minting technology. Look at the Bust half dollar series and you will see many overdates.

Thank you for the explanation, the process is clear now.

Mike

Just in case it applies here, I'll add that many digicams pick out minute surface details over luster. The effect is often a "whizzed" look on silver coins, when it's far less evident in hand. That said, I trust Bill's eye if he saw something. Sometimes I'll only spot whizzing if I compare the junction of the devices to the field at several lighting angles. There is often a gap in the sheen around lettering and portraits on a cleaned silver coin. Of course, the coin in hand is worth 1000 photos.

Here's an enlargement from a photo of a recent example sold on Heritage. This one is graded MS-64 by PCGS. Is it just me, or does the date on Kloccwork's look a bit "off"? Compared to the PCGS example, the 1 seems to extend further down below the base of the 2, the bottom of the 4 is not as sharply notched, and the 4 seems too close to the 9.



There are fakes known for this date; does this one look OK to our other forum members?

Mine looks more like your jaobler

I believe the coin photographed in the original post of this thread is an alteration. Whomever created the alteration seemed to have forgotten that on the genuine coins there is distinct doubling on the 4 of the date on a genuine coin, which the coin in the first post of this thread does not have.

I have taken the liberty of copying both images into my computer and running a point-to-point match overlay and the position of the digits of the date match as they should for size and shape, and the doubling of the 1 of the date matches for size and shape. The four digit, however, is completely wrong. It is 'normal' whereas it should be strongly doubled.

A far closer shot of the date area only of the coin in question would help to support or eliminate this claim.

I currently have no method of uploading my overlay, but I can assure you the 4 digit is different from that on the PCGS holdered example.

Take a look at the reverse. I used your image and pointed out an area where there should be a die line. It should be just above where the olive branch meets the fasces. Can't really tell for sure if there is one there or not, but it doesn't look like it. All 1941/2 coins have this die line. If it isn't there it isn't genuine.