Saw this on TT, and it just made me wonder. There is a decent amount of rotation to make this key date interesting...to me, anyway. What say you? (don't know how to post pics yet, and its still running, so thought it would be easier with the link) http://teletrade.com/coins/lot.asp?auction=2808&lot=1646
there's a very limited number of die pairs for the 16-D (top of my head I think 4), and at least 1/4 of the coins (or some equivalent fraction) have the same reverse, so not uncommon... for a 16-D
So, of all the '16-D's (all 200 and something thousand), approxmiately 1/4 of them have this same rotated die pairing?
I have seen more than one post here stating that rotated reverses add nothing to the value of a coin until they get beyond 90°. Comparatively speaking, that small of a rotation is very common.
I am unsure as to the exact number of die pairings but yes, basically what I am saying is that there are few obv/rev combinations for this date and m/m. So as a percentage of the whole, I would say that they are not as unusual as they might be had the mintage been 10x what it was.
From what I have seen, I would say that typically a die rotation or any other "error" on a key date will typically result in less of a premium for the coin. It seems that most collectors want their key coins to be as "flawless" as possible and thus don't even want things like this with coins. Typically, these types of "errors" get a premium on non-key issues much more frequently...at least from what I have seen.
Typically an error on a key date coin makes it a "white elephant" that no one really wants and will usually result in a lower price. As Camaro said most series collectors would rather have a non-error or as near perfect a coin as possible. Error collectors typically want a nice example of an error and they don't really care what the date/mint is so they would rather have the error on a NON-key date because they don't want to have to pay the extra premium for the key date. The only person who would be willing to pay a premium for it would be some one who is putting together the series with EVERY coin having the error, or an error. These collectors are VERY VERY rare. And even if you do find one it is hard to get a premium out of them because they know "Who else are you going to sell it to?" They have you over a barrel and they know it.
That is cheap. Howabout $4,200 for one that has been whizzed? See http://coins.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=446&Lot_No=1063
Obviously not many Mercury Dime collectors out there now. If you were the type of collector that puts coins in Albums, such a die rotation on Mercury Dimes is as common as the coin itself. I've always thought it was funny how I'd spend so much time attempting to align the obverse of a Mercury Dime in an Album, turn the page and about 25% or more were all tilted all over the place. I presently have over 3,000 Mercury Dimes. Some are in 12 completed Whitman Classic Albums and probably without counting, I'd say about 25% are all with rotated reverses. Many, many more are in 2x2's and again, many are all with rotated reverses. It is nothing to find one with 90 degrees rotated but usually much less and primarily to the left. By that I mean the top of the reverse is rotated to the left. I used to think it was rare to find so many so I started to isolate them as errors but eventually I just accepted a rotated reverse on a Mercury Dime as normal. Almost as if a not rotated reverse would be an error. There is some good points to those though. As Conder101 pointed out people think of those as a white elephant so it's an advantageous thing to point out to a dealer. Usually a person can get a really decent condition Mercury Dime for a cheap price that way.
Here's a thread about the 16-D die rotation I posted a while back, with a link: http://www.cointalk.com/t63817/
