Is this possible or likely? I was checking out a dealer's inventory at a show last month, an 1855 $20 Liberty gold coin that was raw, it looked XF or so. I asked him today if he still had the coin? He said that he had missed that it was actually an "O" mint $20 when he had offered it to me for 2Gs, but once he did he started asking a lot more money. If it was an 1855-O it would have increased its value about 10X! This is not a dealer with much of a sense of humor. Honesty? Meh, I dunno. What is the chance that he was telling the truth that the "O" was visible once closely examined? I have seen somewhat faint O mint $20s but they are never really that hard to see.
I have seen many dealers and collectors miss or mis-read a mintmark. Since it is beyond you now, don't let what could have been build up in your head.
True; I had a PCGS $20, type I, graded AU not have the mm attributed, it was a faint s. They missed it; the auction company too, CAC as well did not catch it. But Heritage did, and they are real experts on gold. But have never seen an O mintmark on a gold coin be virtually invisible.
How the heck does that happen? one would think that all of these top tier companies would recognize a mintmark when they inspect a coin.
The coin was bag marked and when I specifically asked CAC to examine the coin for a mm, they apparently preferred to defer to PCGS' holder.
You would be surprised what gets missed sometimes. Several years back Superior Galleries examined and bought an 1866 proof quarter over the counter. Later they examined it and decided to auction the coin. So they sent it to NGC where it was examined by at least three graders and a finalizer, slabbed and sent back to Superior. Then when the cataloger examined it he noticed something. It was the unique 1866 no motto quarter that had been stolen from the DuPont collection back in 1967! This coin, a proof, was examined by at least six numismatists and not one noticed that it didn't have the motto IGWT on the reverse like it was supposed to have.
Here was the coin with the problem mm: http://www.greatcollections.com/Coin/51157/1865-Liberty-Gold-Double-Eagle-PCGS-AU-50 As you can see it is very hard to see. Condor, on that DuPont coin, you wonder how many "experts" knew but chose to look the other way? The only people making money in the retrieval of stolen goods are the "authorities" and occasional reward money offered.
I remember this story! I once found a 1973-D Kennedy Half with a DDR of which CONECA has none listed. I sent it in for grading, got it back, then forwarded it to James Wiles for attribution and inclusion in the CONECA files as the very 1st 1973-D DDR Kennedy! James examined the coin and saw that it wasn't really a 1973-D but actually a 1973 of which many different DDR's do exist. To this day I have no idea how I AND PCGS missed the fact that there was no freaking D!
