I could swear I read something about this kind of coin, but can't for the life of me remember where it was or what it said. The coin is off-center, has a small degree of cupping on the NW of the obverse, the reeding on the rim is uneven -- sometimes a bit concave, in other points convex, and at times slightly "tilted" toward one side of the coin. It's 1.30 - 1.42mm thick, 17.86 - 17.92mm diameter, and weighs 2.28gm. The oddest part is that from roughly 9:00 to 11:00 on the obverse there is what looks like finning, with another set of reeds inside the finning. I've provided images taken straight-on and from an angle to try to show this. It looks as if there's a reeded coin that's "jacketed" by a thin ring of metal with its own reeding on the outside. I know that's not what's going on, so no need to correct me on that -- I'm just saying that's the best description I can provide as to how it looks. One other thing which I've noticed before (usually on pennies), and can barely be seen here (but is glaringly visible to the naked eye if he light hits it just right) are for lack of a better term "glitters" -- on this coin, red and green round/flat discs, quite small, highly reflective. I've seen them in varying sizes (or so it seems), I don't think I've seen other than red and green (together), and they seem to be embedded in the kind of dark gunk you can see here. Is the Mint doing something that involves the use of red and green "glitter" bits? Or is there some kind of post-mint activity that puts them there? [Edited to add closeup of "inner" reeds, and that this is a 1995-P]
Collar clash between 9:00 and 11:00. Cool, but no real additional value. Look it up on www.error-ref.com. The "gunk" color has nothing to do with the mint. It will probably come off with a little soaking or acetone
Our definitions of "off-center" may not overlap, and the photos most likely do not do justice to the naked-eye view. The rim is about .3mm at the bottom and .8mm at the top. I don't call that centering. If I was working in my late father's machine shop at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and unchucked from a lathe a piece with such "precision" he'd have called me a variety of things not fit for polite company. Moving along... The color I was referencing wasn't the color of the gunk, but the color of the red and green "sparklies" (tiny little discs of bright color with highly specular reflection -- rendering them nearly invisible unless the angle of the sparklie, the angle of incidence, and the angle of reflection all line up just perfectly; easy as pie with the naked eye, and damned near impossible with the crude photographic setup I am using at the moment).
PS: I forgot to reiterate that I only mentioned the sparklies because I see them so often on coins, mostly pennies. I have been wondering what they are and why they are on so many coins, and was hoping that someone might know.
Copper loves to react with stuff in the environment and many reaction products (toning) start as thin layers on the surface. These layers bend the light passing through and you see the diff colors (think of a rainbow). The mint does not use "sparklies" in the minting process. The "sparklies" on your dime are just junk in the post mint organic material stuck to your dime. Once again, when you're checking out error-ref for collar clash, also look up misaligned die (MAD). That will help explain the diff between true off centered errors and what you're seeing. Hope this helps
Again, the sparklies are NOT "toning"! I have countless coins with toning -- bronze, copper, cupronickel, silver -- even a stinking huge number of "junk" silver, much of which was in BU condition when purchased two decades ago, and at that point was rough-sorted (mainly by type), and stored in a bunch of then-new "brown paper bags" -- and when I found numismatics interesting (the silver acquired at the time as a store of (ahem) "wealth"), I remembered that we had those coins, so I decided to find them and see if there were any of numismatic merit. The first thing I noticed was that many of them had taken on beautiful rainbow toning. But none of them started sprouting tiny little red and green reflective discs! So I'm fairly confident we can dismiss the sparklies being an artifact of the toning process, and since you seem to acknowledge that yourself (your argument stream having forked into a lecture on copper oxidation byproducts and the other fork being a somewhat condescending tutorial on gunk getting on coins), I have to scratch my head wondering why toning has even entered the discussion. It has no bearing on the question, and only serves to muddy the waters. So, for the last time, does anyone know why I find these red and green sparklies (for lack of a better term) on so many coins, mostly pennies? If they are known to not be part of the minting process, then so be it. I have no problem with that. I am not deeply vested in that. I'm not even shallowly vested in it. I only mentioned it as one possibility that had occurred to me, mainly because that would have been a logically convenient "single point of failure" (all coins are at some point located in the U.S. Mint; all coins are not at some point located at the bottom of Stacy Mae's red-and-green-glitter-laden purse). Since we're evidently not in a no-forking zone, allow me to fork myself: does anyone else find red and green sparklies on their coins?
Very nice coin! Other than the strike quality and lack of wear, the error looks pretty close to mine (or so it seems to me).
I've researched what I could find on MAD Clash errors (including emailing the contact address on the site by that name), having found a penny with distinct MAD Clash "peeking through the bars" of the monument, but haven't done any study of MAD other than incidental reading of material I happened upon (such as this, for example).
One last comment on the subtopic: I understand the process. I was a professional photographer (the real kind -- attended the Germain School of Photography at 225 B'way, a block from what was about three decades later to become known as "Ground Zero," and had a series of B&M studios). I was also a camera repairman -- retail/wholesale. It's the same reason that the antireflective coating on lens elements have varying colors (usually blue, until the multicoating era, at which point they would have a multitude of colors, predominately green). The interaction between the wavelength of light, the depth of each coating layer, and the underlying reflective layer, results in color being produced. Also similar to dichroic interference filters which are used for things like color printing (the traditional type, using an enlarger and chemicals), projection lamps (to reflect visible light, but pass IR (heat) light), and even in digital cameras, the "IR filter" used to among other things prevent cameras from seeing right through people's clothing (IIRC it was Sony that got into a kerfuffle over that issue). So, I understand the process.
The only difference is the die state . The grinder was already used, on the die that struck your coin . And the die that struck mine, had no grinder used yet .
Why do they use such crude methods to "polish" a die? I've got coins that look like someone took random swipes at the die with a rasp. I don't think it would be that difficult to use a buffing wheel with some polishing compound instead of a grinder (or maybe some coarse sandpaper, or a file). Even if they do need to remove some significant depth of metal, they could still switch to a fine pitched file/grinder/whatever and then give it a quick pass with a buffer wheel to get rid of those lines. They wouldn't have to polish it to a proof-like mirror sheen, just get rid of those deep scratches. I'm not suggesting they do this -- I like finding coins that look like someone at the Mint took a rough file to the dies. I'm just wondering why they don't do what seems like the common sense thing to do.
One last muse on toning: The exact same phenomenon that causes the iridescent colors on a coin was used by Gabriel Lippmann in 1886 to create a full-color image on a monochrome plate -- he was a physicist who understood light interference effects, and did the impossible -- and it earned him a Nobel Prize. Here (below) is a sample of what he created. Remember, all of those colors are produced by the same principle involved in rainbow toning of coins. They're not inks, pigments, or dyes. Just the interaction between the wavelengths of the different colors and a layer of reflective mercury behind the emulsion. If you read the article linked to his name, you'll see that he was a polymath, with significant inventions in many fields. I would not be surprised if he was a numismatist too. For that matter, I would not be surprised if it was the toning he'd observed on coins that provided the spark of inspiration that culminated in that Nobel Prize.
