Damage or error?
An error on a coin would have to be something that happened during the before/during the striking process. An incuse mark on a coin is damage. Say a bag mark from another coin.
If the coin is out of round, it would be damage as the striking process was complete, the mark was after the strike. (99% of the time in circulation) So if the coin was altered in circulation, it is not a die error. It is
PSD (Post-Strike-Damage)
While coin errors do happen at the mint, they are usually one of the kind errors. Something that happen to a die are what I call a die event. Die clashes, die cracks, die breaks, even rim
Cud and
Cuds are part of the die events. Over die polishing removing clashes, floating roofs, missing devices devices, to me are just die events that are struck onto coins.
Die aging events to me are just die events. Something that happens as the die ages. I don't get excited by them like new collectors do. They are common in circulation.
To me an error is a one time event. An incomplete planchet, wrong metal, double struck, triple strike, flip over strikes and the list goes on, but they are offen just a one time event. These are what I call errors. The other wear and tear on the dies I refer to as die events that happen as the die ages. If something breaks off the die, lets say a pin that forms the inside of the mint mark. It now looks like a what others refer to as a 'filled mint mark', is really is a die event that makes every coin after that event happen until the die is retired. This can be hundreds of thousands of times. Then multiply this by the number of dies this happens to very common. So damage on a coin
PSD, are coin events.
Most common damage on coins are usually incuse marks on rims/field/devices/edges. Sometimes coin people do this on purpose. Why? They are trying figure out how to make a coin
look like an error. When they don't accomplish this, guess what? They just spend it. People find them and think they found a mint error. They found a damaged coin.
So learning the differences can make a difference on what you save. If you save one hundred die event cents, you may only have a dollars worth of cents. If you are saving them for educational purposes, you will know what they are and eventually return them to circulation. But if we leave all these coins to the out families when we pass, they will not know which ones are collectables and which ones are not. We get this asked many times on the forum here. So guess what? All the coins will end up in a coin star, unless they are marked what they are and why they are important. Most people in families don't get the coin bug like we do. So that is why from time to time, we find a rare coin in circulation. It was just spent.
Keep this in mind. Leave a note with your collection to who get them, what they are. Hopefully they will keep them or sell them to someone, rather than put them back into circulation.
CoopHome damage error collections
Posted 04/13/2018 12:29 am
