By Douglas Keefe
of Beachcomber Coins
What if I were to tell you there could be thousands of dollars’ worth of coins in your pocket, would you take the time to hunt for them? Well, it’s true, there are everyday coins worth hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars each. And yes, they could be in your pocket or lurking undetected in the container where you throw your loose change.
My last article explored a valuable type of coin. We looked at double die cents, how they occur and some examples to look out for when going through your pocket change. Although I limited my article to coins currently in circulation, there are many examples from the 1800’s and 1900’s that can bring a respectable reward to the lucky finder.
While discussing this article on the Don Williams Show several years ago, a caller inquired if I had heard of a double die dime, a 1942 over a 1941 date. I told the caller that this example is not a double die, but an overdate, which although not as common as a double die, when discovered it too can be more valuable than the regular coin.
As a refresher, a double die is the result of a die that was created by the hub shifting and putting a double image in the die which is then transferred to the coin. Sometimes this is a very faint doubling that requires a magnifying glass to see. An over-date however, is the intentional reusing of a die that was used to strike coins in a preceding year, a common practice in the early years of our country as well as other countries. A die typically was used until it broke apart or became worn. Since coins were supposed to be dated in the year they were struck (a practice not always followed), if at the end of the year a die had a lot of life left in it, the mint master could have a new date struck in the die so it could continue to be used. In all cases the old date could be seen under the new date. This was a common practice through the early 1800’s with an example of virtually all denominations of our coins having undergone this modification. It became less prevalent after the 1830’s with some examples of exceptions being Morgan silver dollars dated 1880 over 79 and 1887 over 6.
Two examples occurred during the 1900’s during war years which, because of a shortage of material and manpower there occurred the need to reuse old dies. The first examples were five cent coins (nickels) struck at the Denver Mint in 1918. A 1917 die was modified by punching an 8 over the 7 in the date. Same thing happened in the San Francisco mint that year where a quarter die from 1917 was reused by punching an 8 over the 7. During World War 2 the first dies used to mint dimes dated 1942 in both the Philadelphia and Denver mints were dies from 1941 which had the number 2 stamped over the 1.
Two other examples from the twentieth century exist: a 1914 over 13 five cent coin (the Buffalo Nickel) and a 1909 over a Twenty Dollar gold piece. What necessitated these dies being reused is not known.
Now for a strange over date. All previous examples were done using a die from a preceding year. In 1853, some quarters were struck using a die that originally had the 1854 date. Why? No one knows. Could it have been a mistake? Or could a die have already been prepared for 1854 when a need for more 1853 quarters developed? We can only guess, but I had a direct involvement in this discovery. Actually, the coin pictured in the Guide Book of United States Coins (the Red Book) was a coin I purchased at a Long Beach California coin show in the 1970’s. Although I did not discover this variety, I was involved in obtaining the coin.
