Has anyone seen this

Sent it off

I sent the coin to Ken Potter monday so I should have an educated opinion in a few weeks. I'll let everyone know when I get a reply. I know it's hard judging through a pic.....awaiting the big letdown ......lol
John

 

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Ok first of all I'm not usually the type of guy that is into bragging rights but this time I couldn't help myself. After discussing this coin on this forum and others I could not be convinced of any answers I got so I sent the coin to Ken Potter. In the NUMISMASTER.com article by Ken Potter July 15 he features the coin as a dropped letter. Therefore I am claiming bragging rights!

Seriously my point here is that no or few pictures or descriptions online can do justice to a coin. I was, and still am new to errors but was pretty much convinced that what I had was different then what was being described and I needed someone in the field to see the coin. I am still finding neat errors and have a couple to be sent off for someone to look at ( MiKe Diamond do you certify varieties in the cent I think someone recommended you to look at a rail splitter cent I have?)

I do enjoy the forum and have learned LOTS and hopefully will learn more.

 

If it is a dropped letter then it's the first legitimate example I've seen on the edge of any dollar coin. But such an error is possible since the Schuler press has horizontally oriented dies and therefore has a vertically oriented collar. That means that a few arc degrees of the working face of the collar faces directly upward and can function as a resting place for a dropped filling. Has Ken Potter mentioned what characteristics persuaded him it's a dropped letter instead of a contact mark from the "T" in PRESIDENT? I've read the article and he presented no observations or argument that would advance his hypothesis. So I remain non-committal. Here is the full link:

http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=12295

If this is a dropped letter, then its appearance would have preceded the impression of the incuse edge lettering. If it's a contact mark, then it could have appeared before or after the edge lettering was applied. If it's a contact mark that appeared after the edge lettering was applied, then we might be able to detect some microscopic indication of this. If there is a microscopic pressure ridge surrounding the incuse letter, then it would be a contact mark. Lack of a pressure ridge would not necessarily invalidate that conclusion but would simply bring us back to a state of uncertainty.

 

I don't involve myself with minor die varieties. It would be better to contact James Wiles or BJ Neff or several other people I could name.

 

I haven't talked with Mr Potter about how he came to his conclusion but when we talked on the phone as he opened the package he told me that in order to confirm that it was a dropped letter he would have to put it under a microscope so I am assuming that he did so. Like I have stated several times I am a novice and can only go by someones expert opinion which is why I sent the coin to Mr Potter. Perhaps when he returns the coin with it's certification he will expound on why he reached his conclusion. I am beginning to wonder where a novice such as myself goes to get a definite answer to a question such as this. I talked to many dealers before I sent the coin to Mr Potter and the reason I sent it to him was the majority of dealers suggested to me that he was the man with the answers, now you raise doubts again. I guess the answer is going with gut feelings which I had with this coin. The limited research I was able to do pointed to a dropped letter and I have several contact marked coins and this is just different.

I do appreciate the names you gave me and I will contact them to see if they are interested in looking at the coins.

I am getting the uncomfortable feeling that like any sport or hobby I have become involved in boils down to the politics of opinions and self agendas I certainly hope I'm wrong

 

I don't think it is politics as much as it is the fact that the specialists want to be 100% positive before they endorse a new error or variety. It's not hard to get egg on your face by doing otherwise.

Chris

 

I'd be glad to inspect your Polk dollar, if you're game. -- Mike

 

When I get the coin back I will send it to you for your opinion....."game"....? I'm not arguing or trying to cause dissent I'm trying to learn.

 

Here's a contact mark from the T of PRESIDENT that I produced without much care or effort.



There are telltale signs it's a contact mark, signs that your coin hopefully lacks. There's a flattened surface surrounding the contact mark, and the edge bulges out slightly near the bottom of the T.

With a little more care, I suspect I could have reduced the associated signs of contact to a bare minimum.

By "if you're game" I simply meant "if you're willing". It's a very common English colloquialism.

 

One thing I now notice is that the T of PRESIDENT is considerably larger than the T on the edge of your Polk dollar. Both the normal raised T and the incuse T I generated as a contact mark are larger than the normal incuse letters on the edge. But this is the smallest T on the design with the appropriate shape and serifs. So where did your undersized but completely proportional T come from? It can't be a dropped letter because these will be the same size (or slightly larger) than the corresponding recess in the die face. It can't be a contact mark because this will also match the letter on coin with respect to size and shape. The only scenario that makes sense is that someone intentionally punched a letter T into the edge of your Polk dollar.

N.B. Please ignore these comments. See the next post.

 

Ignore the last post. I used a Monroe dollar in my experiment and the obverse lettering is different, and smaller, in the Polk issue. The T's of TRUST and the T of PRESIDENT are the right size and shape for either a contact mark or a dropped letter.

 

I just read about this somewhere but cannot seem to find where?? And no it was not here.

 

I communicated with Ken Potter and he seems to have covered all the bases, as far as looking for any signs of a contact mark. After our e-mail discussion, I think there's a very high likelihood that the incuse "T" is a legitimate dropped letter.

 

Interesting Mike. After thinking about this I could expect a dropped letter from the dies (even though they are horizontal presses) but how could this have ended up in the edge lettering process?

 

The incuse "T" would have had to have been on the edge of the coin before the edge lettering was applied. As I said earlier, the dies are horizontally oriented, and the collar is vertically oriented. A plug of die fill could have fallen out of the obverse (anvil) die and landed on that portion of the working face of the collar that faces up toward the ceiling.

 

Thanks Mike I appreciate the time you have spent of this. If you are still interested I will forward the coin to you for inspection as soon as I get it back.

 

Yes, I'd still like to see it, if only to get hands-on experienced with a dropped filling on the edge of a coin.

 

I finally got the opportunity to inspect the purported dropped letter and my conclusion is that it was probably generated after the coin left the lettering device. I detected a subtle pressure ridge at the base of the "T" and even more subtle disturbances below the downturned serifs of the crossbar. Any trace of a pressure ridge should have been flattened by the strike as the edge of the coin met the working face of the collar. If the incuse "T" had been generated by the lettering device (how exactly this could occur is unclear), then any pressure ridge associated with it should have been flattened down by the pressure of the blank part of the lettering die. Adjacent incuse design elements show no pressure ridge. The most likely source for this incuse letter is the obverse design of another coin -- a contact mark, in other words. Ken Potter and I have an honest difference of opinion about this defect. Such disagreements are inevitable in this hobby.

 

I understand the coins has now been inspected in hand. But, one source of initial confusion in this thread is the fact that first pic posted of the error coin appears to show an incused "T", whereas the second pic shows a raised (contact) "T" error.

 

It's the incuse T. A contact mark from the edge of another coin will be raised. A contact mark from the obverse or reverse design would be incuse.