Hi, I’m new here and to the coin world. I’m seeking some insight. I have an unopened double-header roll of Trump dollars with the obverse showing on both ends. Both end coins show similar-looking marks but in different locations, like one has a small gouge-like mark above the head while the other has a similar mark near the hairline. I’m also seeing irregularities in lettering, but again, in different spots on each coin. Since the roll is still sealed, the flaws showing on just the end coins made me wonder if that tells us anything. Could these kinds of marks be related to the striking or die process, or are they more likely ordinary contact or post-strike damage? Thanks in advance.
It looks like hits from the coins striking each other. Even though the rolls are more secure than the bags (where coins can freely move around), they can still get these contact marks before they are placed into the rolls.
Nothing to add on the die question, ddddd and Sal have that right. Marks that sit in different spots on each end coin are almost always coins knocking each other before they were tubed, and the randomness of the placement is the tell. But nobody has told you what the roll is worth, and on a sealed one that is the part that decides what you do next, so I pulled 90 days of completed eBay sales just now. 30 rows, every one ended between Sep 4 and Sep 17 2026. What holds the money is not the marks, it is whether the roll is still sealed: Sealed, unopened mint box, single roll, n=9: $130.00, $135.00, $144.00, $149.00, $155.00, $155.00, $200.00, $202.50, $425.72. Median $155.00, all Sep 12 to Sep 17. Opened, sold as "from the original bag" or as a 25 coin tube, n=5: $62.00, $64.95, $69.99, $72.99, $80.00. Median $69.99, all Sep 17. Listed only as "in hand" with no seal claim either way, n=6: median $139.50. Sealed to opened is about 2.2x on the same 25 coins, against $25 face. So opening it is roughly a $70 to $85 decision, not a free look. The other half is where your end coin question actually pays, just not through the marks. It is the July 4th privy. Single privy coins sold Sep 16 and 17 at $121.49, $125.99 and $125.99. Plain coins out of a searched roll went 20 for $39.99 and 10 for $30.00, so about $2 to $3 apiece. And one roll where the seller could photograph a privy coin sitting at the end of the tube brought $330.00 at auction on Sep 17, against that $155 sealed median. You said both ends show the obverse, so you can see both end coins without breaking anything. The free check worth doing before you decide: go over each end coin for the July 4th privy mark under a bright light. If one of your ends has it, you are holding the $330 shape rather than the $155 shape, and the move is to photograph that end, not to open the roll. Two things I will not pretend about. The two highest sealed rows, $425.72 and $202.50, were both auctions that advertised a privy, so auction against buy it now cannot be split cleanly on this coin yet, the privy is doing that work. And I left four multi roll lots out of the medians instead of dividing them: $479.96 for four, $310.00 for two, $140.00 for two, and $119.99 for two plus the empty bag. Per roll those alone run $60 to $155, which is most of the range by itself.
