Hi, i am wondering if you can help. Im primarily a Canadian coin collector, but since I was able to successfully collect all the state quarters, (both mints marks), I got hooked into the State Parks, Presidential Dollars, and BU Lincoln cents. This is just the stuff struck for circulation so Im not going broke collecting it, but I toss and turn at night when Im not current.I enjoy them, and living close to the U.S border most of my life, i have had lots of exposure to U.S coinage. Theres a dealer up here in Toronto that i can buy this material from, but recently I found the Lincoln dollar on ebay...but this time they made reference to type A and B varieties. The difference being that the edge lettering is right side up (A type) and upside down (B type). They arrived today, and indeed for both the P and D mint marks, there are 2 varieties. I googled the heck out of this, and i cant find any information on these, like how rare of these, how this occured, is it considered an error, and if there are any other presidential dollar coins that have these same varieties as well? Thanks for any other information anybody could provide.
Not an error, just the nature of the manufacturing process. The coin is not forced through the equipment in a common alignment, so you will have both A and B positions as standard coins. These are varieties based on how they have been discussed and labeled by the grading services, and all presidential dollars have these two positions.
Type A & B have been around since the beginning of the series. At first, dealers started charging a premium for the B variety as an "error". The mint pretty quickly released a statement that it is not an error, it is a variety created by the manufacturing process. There are not and will not be seperate mint figures because it is impossible to be tracked which is which. The coins go into the edge lettering machine randomly, with respect to "face up" or "face down". It really depends on how you collect whether this variety is imoprtant to you or not. FYI, no books or folders have spaces for these "varities". To me, it is a non-variety. It is just a side-effect of how the coins are manufactured.
Thanks for the speedy reply. Im really surprised that stringent quality control practices at the U.S mint, doesn't dictate some uniformity with this edge lettering. OMG, now the collecting bug just bit me again, and all of the sudden I got the sudden urge to open up all the 2x2's find out which varieties I got for all the remainder, and start a new hunt to get all the ones I am missing. Thanks for everyones input.
Had to google M. Night Shyamalan.. Based on the manufacturing process you mentioned, I guess its safe to say that a single roll right from the mint could contain both varieties. That may make things easier.
From what I understand the answer to the roll question is: Yes. The process from what I've read is that the struck coins are dumped in a hopper. A chain-type conveyor scoops the coins up one at a time and feeds them into the edge-letterer. In theory, you could catch any 2 coins straight out of the machine and you could get 2 "A"s, 2 "B"s, or one of each. All the machine cares is that the coins go in flat on one side or the other. The real premiums are on coins with missing or duplicate edge lettering.
Type A and Type B indicators Type A simply means that if you look at the obverse of the coin and the edge incuse can be read, it's type A. If you have to turn the coin to tails to read the incuse edge lettering, it's a type B. Hope this isn't overkill.
