Recent Mistakes In My Coin World Columns

I just wanted to alert you to some mistakes I made in recent Collector's Clearinghouse columns:
I wanted to alert you all to some boneheaded mistakes in some recent Collector's Clearinghouse columns.


In the column on guided die scratches (7/30), I was discussing a 1986 cent, not a 1989 cent.


At certain points in this week's column on ambiguous misalignments, I confused the concept of planchet position with off-center strike (a planchet shift in one direction will result in an off-center strike in the opposite direction). I also totally fouled up my discussion of clock positions with regard to the 1983-P quarter. So here are the necessary corrections:


"The November 28, 2011 column featured a 1999-D 5-cent coin that seemed to have misalignments of both dies in opposite directions (see photo). Instead, it was interpreted as the product of a major misalignment of the hammer (obverse) die toward the left and a planchet that was shifted in the same direction but for a smaller distance.

Let's now consider another an ambiguous misalignment. This 1983-P quarter dollar was struck off-center and shows a reverse design that is out of alignment with the obverse design. The maximum distance from edge of the coin to the inferred edge of the reverse field is 3 millimeters while the same measurement to the edge of the obverse field is only 2 millimeters. There are three possible explanations:

1. A centered planchet combined with a misalignment of the hammer (obverse) die toward 1:00 (obverse clock position) and a larger misalignment of the anvil (reverse) die toward 5:00 (reverse clock position, or the same direction in vertical space).

2. A planchet positioned off-center toward 7:00 (ocp), in combination with a horizontal misalignment of the anvil die toward 5:00 (rcp).

3. A planchet positioned off-center toward 7:00 (ocp) and a smaller misalignment of the hammer die toward 7:00 (ocp).

Since off-center strikes are exceedingly common among 1983 quarter dollars, and since misalignments of the anvil die are rare overall and unknown for this year, the third explanation would seem the most likely."



Sorry about the unnecessary headaches my mistakes may have caused.