Dropped Letter

[DB426]

A couple of years ago I ran across a nickel that caught my eye. I’m up loading a picture of it in case there are others who have not seen this type of error before.

It’s a 2009 D Jefferson nickel and has a letter ‘A’ in the reverse field. At first I thought it might be a counter stamp, but looking closely I could see that the ‘A’ was partially under the ‘N’ in ‘CENTS’, indicating that the ‘A’ had to be on the planchet before striking.

After consulting with some local folks who know the minting process in great detail, I learned it is a dropped letter. The reverse die had grease or some other material in an ‘A’, probably in ‘AMERICA’. At some point, the debris fell out of that ‘A’ and landed on the next planchet, creating the coin I found. That also means there are probably some number of 2009 D Jeffersons with struck through reverses.

I sent it to ANACS to get their opinion and to preserve it in a slab. It came from pocket change, so ‘ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE’ is no surprise. I was pleased that they graded it ‘AU 58 DETAILS’. And they agreed that it’s a dropped letter. Even though I spent a few bucks for grading, my opinion, it’s worth about $0.05 or so But lots of fun to look at.

[MintErrors]

In my opinion, its probably a fragment/lamination that was torn off one coin and landed in a general area that saved it from being squashed. Another is a filling or hardened material, like grease and die chips fall out of the die cavity during strikes. Majority is on the flat field which saved it. Working dies have a built in safe distance to keep the dies from clashing so the majority of the "A" remained intact.

If it is slightly raised it might have been a fragment. If it is incused (sunk into the coin) its probably some sort of hardened filling.

A semi popular dropped letters was a Duke Ellington. It was in a version of the Cherry Pickers guide.

ANACS should have put the affected side on the front of the slab. When I used to send in errors and varieties, I used to ask for that. Sometimes it would take them two tries to get it right, even though the request was boldly labeled on the submission form and the ANACS rep called the office to make sure they saw the notes.

Slabbing is getting expensive, on average with a variety or error, close to or above 50 bucks for a single coin, depending on whether a person has the "ANACS insider" discounts.