Hello, All, I've been combing through my coin collection and peeking at the values of everything. While I've been able to find them for most, this is a special case. This appears to be a 1930 Denver mint penny with a mint error. It's fully blank on the back side. Does anyone know what the value of this may be? Thank you so much for your help!
Compare the thickness to a regular cent. You're almost certain to find that it is thinner. Such things are usually the result of boredom and/or mischief.
It's hard for me to see the once-reverse side in detail, but from what I can it appears to have been fairly nicely smoothed, and likely done some time ago. It's an oddity, and even if not mint made or worth any premium, there's nothing wrong with keeping it around if you like it. Welcome to the forum.
First, welcome to the neighborhood, Lisa! There is one thing that should forewarn you that this is post-Mint damage (PMD). Before planchets enter the coining chamber, they run through the upsetting mill which raises the rim partially to make it easier for the metal to flow when struck in the press. As you can see, your coin has no upset rim on the reverse which suggests that it has been ground and/or polished off. Chris
Welcome Princess Lisa! Chris hit it on the nose,someone decided to remove the reverse details for some reason? If you find a "normal one"hang on to it as they are scarce.
Another consideration is that the coin does not reach that final diameter until it is actually struck, and it's physically impossible to strike a coin without both dies in place. Therefore (aside some Mint worker-created error) the reverse of your coin must have been blanked after it was struck. With that said, this becomes a fairly valuable coin in your collection, because it's started you down the road to not needing to ask these questions. The key to understanding error coins is understanding the minting process. It allows you to instantly eliminate certain coins - like this one - on sight, while also giving you an intuitive feel for what part of that process could have created what you're looking at. Of course, you could get to the point where you can tell a "true" Mint error from something postmint 100 times out of 100, and still not quite know how the Mint managed to do what it did to the coin you're holding. Happens to me all the time.
What I can't understand is why the Mint doesn't just send me all of the Mint errors in the first place! Chris
