I am new to collecting and found this Indian Head and am curious about it. Took a few pictures at different magnifications. Did I find something rare and valuable?
Welcome to CT. It's a decent looking coin but it shows a good deal of wear. Even though this coin is 138 years old it is a common date making it worth about a dollar.
Did you notice the first digit of the date is entirely missing? Not even a shadow of the digit exists. I was unsure if that would be caused by unusual wear or not. I am not an error guy but had been following this as I thought it was intersting.
Perhaps a grease filled die eliminated the first digit. If not, then it was minted in 881 and is really old, lol!
It's a debris filled die error. Very Cool, but it probably wouldn't add much, if anything to the value. The coin has a retail value of approx $2+/- in that condition.
Just a die filled with grease or debris. It's common, even on older coins. It is neat and I for one would save it just because but that's me.
So the grease filled dies then have a long history? I had been under the mistaken assumption that was a fairly recent thing.
If you look hard enough you can find greasers on early dates. I've seen many at coin shows. It's just more common with the larger numbers of coins that are being produced today. As production increases, so do the errors and it doesn't matter what it is that is being produced. Think of an assembly line type production. If an error is made then the chances of the 10 in front of that error and the 10 behind that error are probably errors as well. In the minting of coins the large numbers produced will and do create more errors than on older coins. Some become famous and others become common.
One of my favorites is a 1921-D Morgan Dollar where the mint mark got filled with grease. The only way it can be identified as a Denver issue is that it is a VAM that also occurs without the filled die.