To begin with I blame you folks here on Coin Community Forums for motivating me to check all of my 1992, 1992D, 1998, 1999 and 2000 pennies for spacing on the AM in America. I knew about it before but never set the coins aside to check them in the past. That has all changed and am looking forward to doing my first happy dance upon finding one.
What I do now is throw all of the above mentioned coins together when I am sorting pennies and then when done seperating them into the following catagories, 1992 p and D are the first and the 1998, 1999 and 2000 are the second. From there I just make stacks and start looking. I have been able to find many error coins but have yet to find an AM error (although will confess to getting excited a couple times when a coin ended up in the wrong stack).
My customers have been asking about all the pennies I have lying around the checkout counter. I use that as an excuse to start talking to them about coins (wide open opening, don't you think?). When it comes to the AM I figured an easy way to help my customers remember. This applies only to circulated coins and not to the proof's with the S mintmark.
The 1992 and 1992 D we seek the narrow Am (A and M touching). My choices are "narrow" as only two coins meet the criteria of what I am looking for.
The 1998, 1999 and 2000 we are looking for the
Wide AM (A and M seperated). My choices are "wide" as I have three coins I am looking at. This makes remembering what I am looking for easy. I hope others are able to apply this formula to their searching as well.
I do have a quick question. I have looked at about 2000 of these coins the last few weeks with no success. For those of you who have been searching for these for awhile what is the "average" amount of coins you have to view in order to find one of these elusive coins?
Happy hunting and may you find many of these in your pocket change! Sincerely, John Leckrone
Posted 12/19/2009 09:22 am
