What Type Of Error Is This 1977 D Dime ?

Those aren't "die cracks", they're just plain old ordinary cracks, caused by metal fatigue. In other words, the coin itself cracked, due to stress placed upon it. This has nothing to do with the dies, because the stressful event happened long after the coin left the mint.


There is no "design misprint" on the back. There is a giant ring-shaped dent where something hollow and cylindrical, like a piece of tubing, was pushed into the coin. Again, long after the coin was struck.


If other sites are saying that a coin like this is some kind of rare and valuable error, then it sounds like those other sites are either clueless, or lying. Facebook coin groups, in particular, are notorious for being an echo-chamber where damaged coins and made-in-the-basement "fake errors" are lauded as rare and valuable errors.


Sorry, but that's simply not going to work.

The reason is, there really are only a small number of ways coin-making machinery can go wrong, and produce an error. Describing what these errors look like is relatively simple, since they all tend to look very similar. For example, all brockages look much the same: one side of the coin looks perfectly normal, but the other side is a reverse-mirrored-incuse copy of the first side. Describing how a mint error comes about is also relatively simple: the brockage, for example, happens when a coin gets "stuck" to one of the dies, and a second coin (the brockage) is then struck using the first coin as a de-facto die.

We cannot do this for post-mint damage. There are an awful lot more ways that a perfectly normal coin can get damaged, either accidentally or deliberately. There is no way to describe them all. Which means we cannot always tell exactly how "post-mint damage" is given to any one particular damaged coin, but we can say it is damaged, rather than a mint error, simply because it does not fit into any visual category of mint error. In short, if we cannot imagine how an accident in the mint can produce damage like that, then it cannot be a mint error.

Occam's Razor is a useful guide. If there is a simple, non-mint-made explanation for the appearance of a coin, then it is to be assumed correct, rather than a complicated, highly improbable series of events within the Mint.

However, in the particular example of your coin, we do have a reasonable guess as to how it was made. So if you want evidence, simply try the following steps yourself.

- Get a perfectly normal, undamaged dime.
- Get a piece of thick metal pipe. You probably want it long enough so you can comfortably hold it in one hand.
- Get a surface that's firm, but yielding - wood would probably be ideal, but plastic would probably work well too.
- Place the coin on the surface, face-down.
- Hold the piece of metal pipe on top of the coin, so that one end of the pipe is balanced on top of the coin, and the other end of the pipe is sticking straight up in the air.
- Get a really big hammer, and smash it down on the end of the pipe that's sticking up in the air. Try not to injure yourself; if the pipe is too thin or fragile, it might bend or break upon impact.
- If one blow didn't do the trick, try hitting it several times.

Follow this recipe, and you should end up with a damaged coin that looks very much like yours. It might not look exactly the same - the cracking on the obverse might not happen, for example - but it should look close enough. And there is no similar process that might happen within the mint, to create a "mint error" that looks like this.

Meanwhile if you truly wish to educate yourself on mint errors, my best advice is to study up on exactly how coins are made. Know the process inside and out, from making the dies, to making the blank, to punching out the coin, to getting the coin into the bag and shipped off to the bank. Then, the next time you see a weird coin, try and imagine how that coin-making process might have gone wrong in a way that could have created that coin. If you can't - or you need an incredibly improbable series of events to make it happen - then it probably isn't a mint error.

Oh, and one final piece of advice: whenever you see a weird coin, rather than assume it is a mint error and seek validation for it, always assume it isn't a mint error, then try to prove yourself wrong. Because 98% of the time, it's not a mint error. Mint errors are valuable because they're rare, which means the chances of a "weird coin" selected at random from circulation actually being a mint error, is quite low. You'll save yourself a lot of disappointment, and for that 2% of the time when you can't prove yourself wrong and it is a real mint error, you can be pleasantly surprised.

John1,. I love the replies from the top two !!
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not being a butt. I just wanna be clear on what I read !!
Thanks to you all