By Shore Collectibles
By Douglas Keefe
In almost any industry or business, making a mistake can be annoying and out right costly. Not so with collectibles where the opposite is true. In most cases the error is more (sometimes much more) valuable than the original. There is a sub-culture of collectors of coins, currency, stamps, and cards that actively pursue finding, and in some cases discovering something that wasn’t made as designed. I categorized these as errors, where something went wrong in the production. Mistakes are where someone did something they should not have and goofs where something really dumb occurred.
Let us start with errors and some examples as pertains to collectibles. Coin errors occur during the minting process and examples can be such things as the blanks that were to be struck as coins either slip through untouched or are partially struck or struck multiple times. Clad coins sometimes are missing the front or back nickel coating resulting in the coin having a front or back of all copper. A more dramatic error is what is called a double die, that is when a die is being made, the hub creating the die shifts causing the appearance of doubling on the die which then is struck on every coin. And then there is the case where a mintmark was to be added to a die, but for some reason wasn’t, creating a “no mintmark” error.
Currency errors are the result of something going wrong in the printing process, examples are mismatched serial numbers, serial numbers missing, or partially visible and serial numbers printed on the reverse of the note or upside down. Errors known as wet transfers occur when the sheets of currency are stacked after printing. Because the ink is still wet, a sheet of blotter paper is to be placed between the sheets of currency. When this isn’t done or only done partially covering the notes, the ink from the top sheet will bleed onto the sheet underneath. And sometimes a corner of the sheet will fold over and be printed, leaving the intended portion blank and the other side with the design. Cutting errors also can occur. Currency is typically printed in 16 or 32 note sheets and when those sheets are cut to singles, the cut can be off to the point of an adjacent note showing.
Stamps are susceptible to printing errors also. They can include such errors as missing a part of the design due to no ink, part of the design inverted and sometimes the sheet of stamps actually printed twice. Stamps originally were sold in sheets and were perforated to be separated so they can be used singly. (Now they are die cut and self-stick). The perforations were added after the stamps are printed and can be out of alignment with the perforations going through the design or can be missing altogether, creating imperforated stamps.
Cards too are printed and as such are subject to some of the same errors as currency and stamps, which include missed designs, double designs, and mis-cut cards.
This by no means is meant to include all types of errors that occur, it just touches on some of the more common ones and can give you an idea as to what to watch out for when going through your collectibles. There are complete books written about each or these, so you can see I only scratched the surface.
As for mistakes and goofs, I’ll leave them for next weeks’ article, but I guess whether it’s a mistake or goof is probably the opinion of the reader (and this writer) so I’ll let you be the judge.
Douglas Keith is the President of Beachcomber Coins, Inc. He and his wife Linda operate Beachcomber Coins and Collectibles, formally located in the Shore Mall and now located at 6692 Black Horse Pike, Egg Harbor Township in the old Wawa building. They also have satellite offices for buying only in Brigantine (Saturday), and in Absecon (Tuesday). Between them, they have over 70 years of experience buying and selling coins, collectibles in precious metals. They are members of the American Numismatic Association, the Industry Council of Tangible Assets, the Numismatic Guarantee Corporation, the Certified Coin Exchange and the Professional Coin Grading Service. Visit their website at www.beachcombercoinsinc.com for video and information.
