I have a 1989 $1.00 Canadian (loonie), that is about 80% the right gold color metal, but the other 20% is a silver colour (like the 25 cent coin). The stamping has all the correct $1.00 markings. From the head side it looks like a quarter moon in silver. From the front (loon) side there are only two slits of silver on each side of the gold. Any thoughts on it's value? I can post a picture if required.
hnickel: Without a picture it is very difficult to try to imagine the type of error. Welcome to the forum, and good luck and have fun.
Wow that seems funky but for your sake, I really hope it's NOT a counterfeit but it seems to me as it is!
Lamination maybe? Looks almost like something got on it (such as acid) and is peeling the top layer of metal off. That is my two cents. I'll leave this to the experts. Either way, good find. :thumb: Phoenix
to CoinTalk. From the way the border dots look in both pictures, it seems that the metals on each side of the dividing lines are essentially on the same level. However the overall look of the picture seems to show different levels. Which is correct?
Heres a blurb on the chemistry of the loonie http://ncwsnc.cheminst.ca/articles/1991_loonie_e.html or maybe you got something like this... http://www.spookclub.com/product_info.php?products_id=408&osCsid=5da9d9378f28420873533e8f485cc4d3
The seperation is basically at the same level (can not feel a bump, nor does a ridge show up in a tracing). There is a blackish zone that looks like a "ramp" in the copper side of the joint. It is this "shadow" area the appears as a ridge in the pics.
It seems, now that we know that ALL loonies are plated, that this coin is missing some of the plating. Due to the shapes of the missing plating, could it be that the copper part was never put on properly?
It could be that, but I can do the same thing using a recitifier and electrolis stripping. I do it all the time with copper plated pennies just for the heck of it.
Although Twigg's article doesn't mention it, in order to have only part of the coin plated, some type of "resist" must be applied to the part that isn't supposed to be plated, and then removed after plating and prior to distribution for circulation. That opens the possibility that application of the "resist" got messed up somehow, resulting in an incorrect plating errpr. Hey, Just Carl the chemist, does that make sense, and if so do you know how it might have happened?
The coin came to me in this state. There is not supposed to be a silver "mask" on the loonie, so the "resist" must have been placed on accident at the mint, or some foo is just being creative playing games.
hnickel, Congratualtions on the nice find! The coin definitely has a plating error which is similar to the "Missing Partial Clad" errors on Clad U.S. coinage! Although the condition on the coin is not excellent, the error is a nice and very hard to find type error since so much of the coin received the plating while a significant amount of the coin did not! There is really no way to determine what the coin is worth to Collectors of such errors...except to place the coin up for auction on eBay or elsewhere. However, I do believe that there are quite a few Collectors that would pay a fairly nice price to own the coin. Anyone's guess as to the fetching privce would be as good as mine but I believe that it could bring several hundred dollars uo to $1,000 dollars or more! If auctioned, the quality of the pictures and the write up of the Auction description will be the keys to getting a nice fetching price for the coin. Good luck...Frank
Well, I disagree with that part of Frank's comments (and only that part). "Missing clad" involves a measurable thickness of metal which should have been, but isn't, physically bonded to the other metal in the coin's composition through an application of pressure. It results in the coin having a measurably lower weight and thickness than normal, as measured by ordinary scales and calipers. A "plating error", on the other hand, involves the presence or absence of an extremely thin layer of metal chemically bonded to the main metal of the coin. It results in the coin having a different weight and thickness that can only be measured by highly precise scientific instruments. In addition, plating errors can be highly irregular in shape, as hnickel's coin demonstrates, while cladding errors will either affect the entire coin, or possibly one relatively straight-edged portion if it came from the end of a strip of the "sandwich" where an outside metal didn't cover the entire length of the strip from which the planchet was cut.
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