I came across this ebay listing for a Jefferson racoon eyes error.click here It looks to me by the picture that the eye sockets have been tapped down post mint. Without seeing the lustre its hard to say for sure. I wondered what others thought of this. ( no i don't want to buy one)
I am pretty sure that this is an legitimate error and is caused by exactly what the Seller stated! This error is identical to the overzealous polishing and grinding done to some of the Doubled Die Dies used in minting the Minnesota "P" Quarters to polish/grind out any evidence of any "Extra Tree" on the coins. Apparently there is either Doubled Die doubling or Die Clashing on some of the Dies and the Mint worker(s) tried to erase any evidence of such! I have quite a few of the Minnesota "Doubled Die" Quarters and others with similar Die Polishing/Grinding marks on them as on this Jefferson Dollar. I found two Jefferson Dollar error coins! One looks like it was struck with a Pitted Die (but apparently has another cause) as the area around Jefferson's right eye and looks like he suffered a bad beating. The other has the same error as the first but also has spots (which are spotty) with lamination separations on Jefferson's right cheek and to the West and Southwest in the fields (as you are viewing it). At first I thought they might be gouges (Post Mint damage) but after closer inspection, you can see that something caused the surface of the coin to peel away but in little spots or pockets. My guess is that for some reason, portions of the surfaces of the coin actually stuck to the Die in the minting process and lifted these spots off of the coin. I will try to get some pictures of the coin and post them here or on Photobucket with a link to this Thread. Frank
This seller I believe has sold nothing but new dollars error coins. He is accurate in his discriptions and has alot of his "errors" checked via CoinWorld with articles in Collectors Clearinghouse on his finds. He tends to get his "errors" listed quick to capitalize on the hipe. Since he is accurate in his discriptions and thorough in his research of the particular "error" he is not doing anything wrong. That being said are these "errors" actually going to be worth anything only time will tell. I myself believe these minor errors will not be worth much more then $1 but I have been wrong before.
nickelman, Thanks for the great and informative post! It is hard to say what premium that this type of error will add to any of the Jefferson Dollars. However, since the error (polishing/grinding) concerns a design element of the coin, I believe that these will be much more sought after than the similar errors on the Minnesota "P" Quarters as these errors concern only the fields! Frank
Frank, I don't know anything about the Minnesota Quarter error but I agree this could be a sought after error just never know about these things? Three legged Buffalo is the most famous I can think of, I'm sure there where a lot of collectors back then that thought this is not worth more than 5c. That would have been me LOL. I found a couple of heavily polished eye Washington Dollars. Sold 1 on ebay for around $7 and kept the other for myself. Will try post a pic tonight.
I guess what bugs me is that the flat spots don't appear to be at the lowest spots on the design. I put green arrows on what appears to me as raised elements flattened down. The crease around the eyeball apears to be deeper, so I would expect the flat spots to be in the eyes.
