Given to me as a gift. Neat I guess, but I would have prefered it if they hadn't polished the die smooth!!!
Something odd about the data on that certificate. According to the dates when it was put into use and when it was retired it was in use for over two months. But in a schuler press running 60 strikes per minute, running two shifts a day,that die would have produced 679,603 coins in just 12 days. For it to have lasted over two months and just produce that number the press would have only been running 3 hours a day. I think that retirement date should be 4/16/1998, or the die started production 6/6/98.
Would the coin taht was received with this die be considered a 1st strike? If so would a grading company slab it as a 1st strike?
I got one awhile back from my coin club's charity auction. Same mint and year, but for a quarter. Also, my die lasted longer before it cracked under the pressure of government life.
No, and No. They did sell them on the website, but they stopped selling them a few years ago. Yours makes even less sense. In use for almost three months but only made 108,194 coins? For a two shift a day production run that would be only 75 coins an HOUR or a little more than one coin per minute. The press should be able to produce that many coins in 30 hours of run time, or about two days production. I'm starting to think they were just making things up on these certificates.
Perhaps dies are swapped out for inspection, polishing and what not - there fore sit idle at times - and the dates are not suggesting continuous use.
I say it is just a timing difference between being actully pulled from production and officially record as retired on the mint records. Probably had to be inspected by QC ( see if the die could be reworked and/or analyzed to determine reason for failure) before being officially retired. I'm still of the opinion the coins included with the dies are 1st strikes. Certainly they are Very Very Early Die State.
The Certificate of Authenticity does state that the accompanying coin is "one of the first acceptable production coins struck with this die." Maybe they could put that on the slab!
Problem is once you opened the shipping box from the mint there would be no way to prove that coin came with that coin and die set. I doubt there are many if any of these sets still in unopened boxes.
