2013 P Nickel Counterstamped With "benghazi" That I Found At Work

Hey thanks! Good point! Could have been just someone doing this solo. I couldn't find that half dollar that you did, so I guess I should work on my googling skills.

Counter stamps have been used for advertising and political statements for as long as there have been coins.

to the CCF!

I'm one of the guys who loves counterstamps. That said, my main interest is in 19th century U.S. merchant counterstamps on U.S. and world coins. The fun part is often the the challenge of attribution and uncovering some interesting history. Counterstamped coins often tell us of the times, during which they circulated .... who held them, how, when and where they were used/spent.

This BENGHAZI piece serves as a reminder of a sad event in recent U.S. history that had far reaching political implications. Perhaps, a hundred years hence, some collector may be curious about this piece, research it and make the connection. Counterstamps open windows to the past, often bringing a breath of fresh air to a damaged old coin.

Political counterstamps tend to be inherently controversial, and by nature tend to be encountered with far less frequency than merchant pieces. Pieces like this BENGHAZI counterstamp, while not worth much, will long make for interesting discussion, methinks.

@Gailtheesnail .... Given what you wrote above, you might find so-called "love tokens" an interesting venue to collect. These painstakingly engraved coins typically convey sentiment and romance, as it was, during the late Victorian era. Love tokens, engraved coins offering sentiment, that simply bear initials or names are fairly common and relatively inexpensive. Those that convey more detailed sentiment tend to be more costly.