How are altered mintmarks added???

What I know about altered mintmarks are two methods.
They would soder the mintnark or glue it.
The second has me puzzled, I would assume they hold down the mintmark with a needle or toothpick, but what type of glue would leave little residue. I know superglue leaves residue as do glue guns so would they use elmers glue??
Seriously I'm just pondering how it would be done and what type of glue.
Anyone know?
Can't wait fir the book "confessions of a coin alterer" to come out.

 

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what you plan on opening a rare coin store on ebay?

i joke! i have also wondered that as well.

 

I have no idea but unlike you I dont really care to know. I see no reason that knowing this would help me in identifying altered coins. But good luck with your search

 

My neighbor recently bought a slabbed 1916-D dime. After getting it home he was looking at it and the D mintmark came loose and was rattling around in the slab.
The dealer returned his money.
Also a collector must beware of removed mintmarks too. An example would be a 1914-S half dollar where someone ground off the S.

 

Dito...

 

Glue is one way. Another way is where a mintmark is "embossed" into the coin. Imagine a tiny hole drilled into the edge and then the metal is squeezed upward from the plane of the coin to form a raised mintmark. That's why it's always good--for raw coins, where you can see the edge--to examine it for any signs of metal disturbance, solder that might cover the entry point, etc.

 

Soldering is the preferred method of adding a mm to a coin.

If you ever watch Pawn Stars on History Channel, they had an episode where a woman brought in a 1932-S Washington quarter and Rick noticed something was off about the mm. It was confirmed that it was soldered onto the reverse of the coin and therefore just an ordinary, common 1932 Washington worth only melt.

 

Can you show us some photographic examples of this embossing method?

Chris

 

Tritto!!

 

I had a dealer show me a 1914-D Buffy that had a embossed D added to the coin. You could see the plug on the rim with a 5X loupe and the D was a little shaky but would pass as a genuine mint mark. He said he got burned when someone else pointed it out to him.

 

there is a decent picture of an altered 1926 Buffalo with the embossed mintmark and a picture of the plug on the side in the PCGS guide to coin grading and counterfeit detection.

 

It is well illustrated and explained in Larson's Book on Coin Forgery which I have, but luckily Google books also has it. Look at pages 30-35.

http://books.google.com/books?id=AM...6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=embossed mint mark&f=false

 

Thanks for the link Jim.....very interesting reading.

 

Wow, so I wanna know who slabbed this.

Or someone taking a leg off of a 37-D buffalo

 

Fascinating. makes me want to make dateless buffaloes with "CC" mint marks.

 

Simply removing the leg should not fool an educated collector. There are several die markers to look for on a genuine example (e.g., die polish lines under the buffalo's belly, "moth eaten" rear leg, etc.)

 

But... don't you remember the episode of Silver Spoons? Ricky Schroeder had to sell the 3-legger to repair a coffee table and he just filed another one to fool his dad until he came clean! I saw it on tv, so it must work.

 

What is Silver Spoons?

 

Per http://tv.yahoo.com/silver-spoons/show/33609;_ylt=AghlVxCyIOlQ2UogAO_MhN0AWYh4

 

True but it works great for fooling newbies and uneducated collectors (not always the same thing.)