New Discovery! 1919 P Mercury Dime DDO!

They're going to be vanishingly rare if it took nearly a hundred years to get two into the public eye. This one's been the hot topic at NGC all month.

Greetings,

I submitted the discovery coin to Bill (shown in my image in the OP). it's quite exciting for sure. As of now, just the 2 examples have surfaced, no new ones from weekend cherrypicking yet. When the news articles hit this week, hopefully some more surface.

If you want to read the rest of the story, this is probably the best post to follow along with. There are smaller ones on NGC and coin talk as well.

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Let's see if this works...

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Oops, sorry about that. I'm a forum moderator for an major iOS/android game company with a few million users, you think I would have read the rules first.

Let's see if I can get a few pics in here from my iPad.



This is the second specimen, the xf piece


I found this coin in a box of oddities I bought from a friend a few weeks ago. Either he or someone he bought a collection from had labeled the 2x2 as In God We Trust Doubling? - so they saw it, but it was likely around 1988 it was put in the box I bought and back then with no Internet, not as easy to get word out like I did.

As for R8 and population, I have no idea how many will surface. There has only been about 1000 sets of eyes looking for a few weeks, and the bulk of the NGC/PCGS forum members aren't typical collectors of... Common coins. If this DDO was on a 16-D we probably would have found 100 already. I don't think the majority of these are going to be in most dealers main inventory. I think they will pop up out of 90% bags, bulk circulated collections, tucked away in closets, in old Whitman albums, etc. I'm hoping once the news articles come out, several will surface. Unless you are a dime specialist, most folks haven't touched or looked at a 1919 Merc in years. My last time was also in the 80's filling a Whitman album. Few guesses so far think about 100 will be found in the next year, but who knows.

Roger Burdette sent me the mint records for 1919.

For 1919-P, the mint used 521 obverse dies striking 37,017,050 pieces, averaging 71,050 dimes per die. 35,740,000 was the final acceptable production numbers. 1,277,050 were rejected.

Beyond those facts, the rest is pure speculation and meaningless, as we don't know if this DDO was used for a full, average run, if it was noticed and pulled early, etc.

So, maybe 71,000 were made. How many survived the 1.2M reject pile and actually left the mint? How many were melted in the silver run-ups? These were probably workhorses during the depression, how many were saved, or are so slick you can't see the DDO?

Nobody knows, but I can't wait to see an uncirculated example of these. The coming year will be exciting for sure watching this story unfold.

Holy bananas, batman. That's probably the strongest doubling in the whole series.

Without a doubt the strongest doubling. Most of the DDs are close spread. A few (35 & 36?) have at least some spread to see good notches, but... nothing even close to this DDO in the series.

Now... we just need to find a bunch more so it becomes somewhat collectable.

I don't see it happening. There are undoubtedly a few more out there in circulated grades but this doesn't need a variety specialist to find. Anyone paying sufficient attention to grade the coin will see it. I understand your reasoning, though - ten would be more valuable individually than two.

It was kind of like the new B1 Reverse Morgan we found a few years ago, first since the 1960's. It prompted the discovery of a half-dozen more, including a second new B1 using the same obverse. But that was pretty much it, and they're scarcer than hen's teeth.


Yea, it does seem rather obvious, my guess is there will not be very many on the high-side grade-wise.

I'll probably never sell my specimen, so it isn't about valuating that, but it would be neat if it made it into price guides (I suppose the RedBook would be the holy grail) but not going to happen with 2 specimens.

A lot of folks are comparing this due to the type of doubling to the 1916 DDO Buffalo nickel - of which there are what... 250 or so certified examples. When it was actually added to the RedBook there was maybe 100 known I think?

I really don't know where this one will land population-wise, only time will tell.

Not sure how scarce hen's teeth are - what is the VAM-85? Population at right now?

Nice! A few more found is in everybody's best interest.