Error Coin Market Exploitation

Yesterday in one of my favorite coin shops, they were putting out older coin books (probably from an estate) on the cheap, and one in particular caught my eye.

Dating from the 1970's, the author was a fellow named John Devine who at the time went by the moniker Lonesome John. A goodly portion of the book focuses on forged dies used not to make fake coins per se, but to add spurious strikes to genuine coins so as to create bogus "error" coins. This isn't something you seem to hear about much nowadays, but apparently back then there was quite a thriving cottage industry putting out such nefarious items.



Mr. Devine offered an authentication service for mint errors, affixing those he judged genuine to a "Lonesome John Blue Eagle Certificate".