Woodgrain State Quarter

the ebay thing is most often a trick

tom has a "error quater "
dick is looking for a " error quater " and decided to bid on the quater
tom has his friend harry bid on the quater up to just shy of the reserve price

dick wants the coin he bids , toms " friend " harry bids
it goes up hopping dick or someone else will see the price climbing and jump in on the bids
if the price never gets high enough or tom wants more money for the coin, he says " someone local has bought it " and cancels the auction only to start the process at a later date

Woodgrain Lincolns are typically attributed to being caused by improperly mixed alloy. Because it was not a homogeneous alloy, the metal mixture causes the coin to tone in an uneven manner. This was a somewhat common phenomenon in the early years of wheatie production and the results would be somewhat mixed. Some of the improper alloy coins were dog ugly and some turned out quite nicely-


You can clearly see the metal "swirled" together but it still runs in a somewhat parallel fashion. The modern Lincoln Memorial woodgrains have a markedly different appearance. The modern version presents itself as darker fine parallel lines-

Because of the extreme differences in appearance, I have a hard time attributing this phenomenon to improper alloy mix because I have seen single sided LMCs(along with two sided) but the LWC woodgrains are always two sided. I believe that the modern version is more likely to be caused by the process of rolling the metal stock to the proper thickness. The metal stock is passed through two heavy rollers to reach the proper thickness before the blanks are punched out. The rollers can have lubricating oil, grease, metal sludge, etc. stuck to them which would cause the transfer of fine parallel lines to the blank and they would also be present on the final struck coin. I would say that this is the phenomenon that affects your State Quarter.

I wouldn't necessarily call this an error because it is not something that the Mint screens out. I would consider it more of an "oddity" like die chips, cracks, minor clashes, and minor laminations. Still collectible if it appeals to you but not really worth anything.

That appears to be to be environmental toning. In other words the slight differences in the banding of the metal turned differnt tones while laying on something over a period of time. I do not believe this toning would stay on the coin if it were wiped with acetone or goo-gone. What tells me this is the image of the obverse where the striping fades off into normal colored coin. This would not be the case if the alloy were mixed improperly for the nickel clad part of the coin.