Over the past year, and with the aid of a 10 power lighted magnifier I have found litterally a couple hundred Washington quarters with many diff. die cracks. Some are the common at the base of the bust but many are from the rim and many with multiple cracks. All are pre state quarter types and circulated. All are otherwise undamaged as I toss the ones with damage. Would these have any resale value, say, on Ebay as singles or in lots? And if so how much should I ask for them? Any help would be gratefully recieved. Have a great week everyone.
If you have any with cracks going from the rim into the field you might give them a try. The ones that seem to do best are diecracks that, because of their position, have a name associated with them: "speared buffalo," "spitting horse" ect. I sold a spitting horse quarter on Bidville once for $10. I got it in change and sold it about a week later. Then I calculated my ROI annualized and and got some crazy figure like 7,000%. LOL Who says you can't make money in coins?
Hello and thankyou. Yes, many of these are going from the rim into the fields, some from 12:00 going through the head, some from the rim on reverse going through the left wing. For some starnge reason, the bulk of the better ones were from a local McDonalds in Ct. Quite possibly from someones collection, sad to say. Helping a friend with his collection recently revealed a 1964 quarter in B.U. with a left wing crack. Sent that one into ANACS and it came back MS 65. A nice find. I'm not familiar with die stages in errors so this will be my next project. Thanks again for your reply.
I don't know who's who or what any more. I haven't sold anything for 6 or 7 years. You might look into ecrater. They advertise free sites for sellers but I don't know any details about it. I bought a couple of medals there from an exonumia dealer I like from the old RCC days. Good luck.
I forgot to mention, on Lincolns die cracks that go from the head to the rim are spiked heads. I guess they're called the same thing on quarters. Die cracks and die failure errors in general are pretty under appreciated. I'm not aware of even one modern reference on them specifically. Usually they'r referred to as die markers. If you like "frontier" collecting, die cracks are a good place for it.
I collected Lincoln errors when I was a kid and bought the Frank Spadone guide but eventually he was run out of town by more "knowledgeable" experts. I still have it and it's still fun to look at it. As my eyesight got worse I picked up the magnifier and started to go thru rolls I had accumulated over the years. Amazing how many were in those rolls of BU coins. Like the roll of quarters I mentioned earlier some of these rolls yielded full half rolls of all sorts of die cracks. A roll of 1959 had a LOT of multiple cracks on the reverse between the pillars and quite dramatic also. It will be a shame to see the Lincoln cent eventually eliminated tho. Looking through my sons 1960 proof set yielded a doubled die Franklin, that was pretty awesome. He was elated when I told him about it.
The mint had serious issues with their dies in the 50's. I have Jean Cohen's book that catalogs over 6,000 cracks and breaks on Lincolns up to 1967. She used a Margood stamp and hand drew cracks and breaks for each one--cracked skulls, spiked heads, BIEs chips etc. It' ashame that book was never updated or continued. I heard that John Wexler was going to publish a new BIE handbook with photos--the one from 70's is also drawings. I don't Know what happened with it. It was probably about 7 or 8 years ago that I heard that. But I'm not aware of any knew book. Too bad. Failed die errors on Lincolns are numerous, inexpensive and fun. And grading takes a back seat. A craked skull won't look any better on MS70 than MS60. And for BIEs even XF's are good enough. But references are just way out of date.
How much is this worth? This 1959-d quarter has numerous cracked die marks on both sides. The pics really don't capture them very well. I really have no clue how to value this coin. My local coin dealers dont deal with error or mistake coins much so they just confirmed the issue but have no idea on value. Any opinions?
You might try to find quarters with similar cracks on ebay and see what they close at. Pricing coins whether they're errors or not can be rather numbing excercise.