b. brodie when you mentioned the dot before the word unum being there this almost confirms what I said earlier that this may be a dropped letter or what some folks prefer to call a struck thru die filling. since you mentioned the dot being there then this proves that the U and N were struck into your coin right side up and I just don't see how it could possibly have been struck thru a coin fragment because this would have made the incuse letters upside down and backwards unless the fragment flipped over from one end to the other , and I don't think this happened since the dot is still where it is supposed to be. What makes this coin to hard to confirm what happened to it is that the UNU of UNUM looks similar even when they are placed backwards but the dot you mentioned confirms that the U and N are not backwards on your coin. your coin also has another small struck thru place where some of the material came loose from the piece that made the incuse letters on you coin. like I told you earlier if your coin is from a dropped mint filling it is very scarce because most of the time this stuff breaks apart into small pieces and just makes small indents in the coins when struck. I have two awesome state quarters where this happened and they are two of my favorite coins .what makes them so unusal is that this broken up stuff got stuck onto the die and kept on making coins. I don't know how many got made this way but these two was all that was in a whole box of new state quarters. brodie I will try to find them and If I can I'll put a photo on here of them so everyone can see them. I'm new to this forum and I enjoy it.
So the letters are incuse? Odd. I.m not sure how you can create in incuse N that is not backwards unless you start with a raised backward N. I can only think of one way to do it. You have a struck cent that is laminating. A flake comes off that has the full thickness of the letters UNU but just a razor thin layer of metal holding them together. This flake lands on a planchet in the press right side up. As the coin is struck the razor thin layer is pressed into the coin causing the depression, but the full thickness letters are pressed down THROUGH that razor thin layer into the coin creating an incuse non-reversed image of the letters.
b.bodie I know how to settle this discussion about your coin and find out for sure what it really is. I could tell you for sure if I had it in hand so I could look it over closely and study it. here's what to do : send John Wexler a good photo of it but like me he may not be able to tell for sure if you have a rare dropped letter coin or a struck thru fragment coin which is close to the same thing unless you send the coin to him. Mr. Wexler has been authenticating coins for me for 30 years or maybe longer and he is the best and most honest error coin person that ever lived in my opinion and you can trust him to take good care of your coin and send it back to you if he requests to see it. Mr. Wexler's email address is; jwex@comcast.net the problem with sending coins to get them attritubeted and graded thru a grading service is that about all of them do not have many error experts on their staff. sometimes they do ask a experts opinion and sometimes they just take a stab at it. If I have a unusal looking error coin that is not a common error even if I'm sure what it is I always get a experts opinion of my opinion and send the experts opinion with my coins to the grading companys so they can already know what the error or variety is. This makes it easier for the grading companys. bodie if you do ask Mr. Wexler please let us folks on here know what he thinks about your coin. If you send him a photo be sure to mention to him that the dot before the word unum is also struck into your coin . the dot is important because it tells us which end of the word UNUM that we are looking at.
Thank Rascal, I have written Mr. Wexler. I will let everone know what he says. BadThad, sorry about posting in the wrong forum. Here is a photo of the graded coin.
He probably didn't want to get into our little discussion about your coin since it is already slabbed. Everyone on here already knew NGC got it right. A struck thru fragment could mean about anything and does not tell us much. I'm almost sure after looking so much at your photo that whatever got struck into your coin did not come from a fragment off another coin or a piece of a coin die. but like I said earlier either way you still have a great coin.
