Coin Dies

The first step in preventing a coin from being counterfeited while it's in circulation is making sure dies are not being used illegally. That's why, for centuries, when a set of dies goes out of use, my understanding is that they are often formally destroyed, not just "decommissioned." These are not items a government would want to sell, like military surplus.

The old State Quarter dies were defaced, and used to be for sale on the Mint's website, I don't know if the still have them. I have also seen few on $bay for sale.

If all these dies are out there, I'd love to see some pictures of them. I have heard of the Fugio Cent dies that were "discovered" by Horatio Rust in the 19th century being used as paperweights in a hardware store, that he used to make the New Haven "restrikes," but I think the consensus now is that they were dies from later fantasy pieces, and not Abel Buell's originals.

US coinage dies are as a rule rare items. The most common examples are the completely defaced dies that the mint sold directly to collectors in the late 1990's and 2000's. These dies have the die face completely ground off leaving a flat featureless face.

The next most common are dies that were defaced and sold for scrap steel back in 1968/69. Literally several 55 gallon drums of old dies were purchased the scrap dealers and entered the numismatic market. These dies had the die face defaced by using an acetylene torch to melt and puddle the die faces. In some cases part of the die face may still be visible and undamaged.

The third most common are a couple of thousand dies that were used to strike the proof (and possibly MS) 1996 Olympic commemoratives. These dies were defaced by grinding a fairly narrow X across the face of the die. In this case most of the original striking surface remains intact. These dies are costly often running several hundred dollars apiece today. The Mint originally sold them on their mailing list for $50 each. They sold out almost e=immediately.

Rarest of all are earlier 19th century US coinage dies either X canceled or even rarer not cancelled at all. Most of these dies are in museums, the few in private hands tend to sell in the thousands of dollars when they make their rare appearances in the market. There are probably between two and three dozen dies in this category at most. Most of these are CC Morgan dollar dies that were discovered a couple decades ago under sidewalks during renovation of the CC mint. None of those CC dies are in the marketplace. The ANS has at least two early 19th century dies in their collection, One of the most recently sold dies was for a late 19th century double eagle.

Sometimes coinage dies for foreign countries will show up in the market but they are also rare. Token dies do show up from time to time. Recently Lost Dutchman Coins in Indianapolis purchased some 200 token dies from the late 19th/early 20th century.

just seen this post I finished a few display cases a few weeks ago to store some aussie 1c 5c and the top nad bottom dies from a 10c all 1970s .............. so tried not to make them paper weights they look good in there new cases

so the serial numbers on the die ..... could tell you what when and were

I purchased the Michigan Quarter Die some years ago directly from the mint. Just pulled it out the other day actually. Guess I need to take some pictures :)

sweet very rare in Australia but no were close to that price I could only wish