What do people on this board think of the significance if the US Mint moves the edge inscription from the edge of the coins to the obverse? I see alot of sellers on ebay talking that this could happen fairly soon and would this really be a price boost for the Washington smooth edges along with the Adam's double stuck and smooth edges? Would prices skyrocket for the Adams and Washington smooth edges because you would have a mintage in the hundreds of millions for each new president that comes out in the future and of course the edges would be smooth, however there would only be the estimated smooth edges that made it out of the Mint by error for the Washington and Adams smooth edges. In other words, 10 years from now I could easily find a Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy smooth edge because if the edge printing was moved to the obverse then of course they would all be smooth edges, however there would only be the estimated few thousand Adams smooth edges out there in comparison to the likely hundreeds of millions for each new president that comes out in the future. Thoughts on this appreciated!
Of course the ebay sellers are saying that - they are trying to make people believe it so they will pay more for the coins now. Personally, I don't think it will make a bit of difference and there is no reason it should. Whatever they do with the coin's design in the future will have no impact on the coins already issued - it won't change the numbers available one dang bit. The only thing that will make any difference in the value of the coins is if the speculators chose to believe the nonsense being spouted by the sellers. And even then it will only change it temporarily.
5 Critical Things To Look For I'm also wondering what impact the edge lettering will have. I bought about 50 raw Wisconsin leafs within the first year they were discovered t with a cost of about $80 each. I asked dealers at shows what their opinion was and for the most part I was told it would be a $20 coin within a few years. Well a low leaf ms65 from ngc sells for around $200 now and a high leaf around $350. Estimated mintage for both leafs are around 30,000 to 50,000 and from what I'm hearing estimated mintage of the double struck is around 30,000 to 50,000 and for the Adam's smoothies around 5,000, so I think the Wisconsin leafs could be a good gauge to go by because they also went down initially to around $60 and gradually worked their way back up. Here are five critical things these errors have going for themt. 1) Look at the state quarter program and which ones did the best? From my research the first 4 that came out seem to have done the best by far which can probably be attributed to more and more new collectors coming into the program as it progressed and thus them needing the first few to complete their sets. The same should happen with the presidential program. 2) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John ADams are probably the most historical, notable, and valuable people in American history and like they are commonly referred to they are the fathers of our country. Where am I going with this? What would you rather have with everything else being equal in terms of mintage a Thomas Jefferson presidential coin dollar or a no nome preisident such as James Polk?? Of course, most people would answer Thomas Jefferson because of his place in history. The popular coins in this series without a doubt will be George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, ABraham Lincoln, and JFK. The popularity of these presidents only adds fuel to the fire when errors show up for them as opposed to someone like a James Polk. Another analogy would be would you rather have a Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, or Roger Clemens error card or some no name player? Once again, this hits home my point that these errrors wouldn't have been as significant if they showed up later on in the program for presidents that are relatively unknown to most Americans. 3) The most positive thing I read about the edge insrciption possibly ending was dealers would be scrambling to put together sets of an edge inscribed Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams along with a smooth edge Washington/Adams and finally a double struck Adams. I think this would be a pretty neat set consisting of a bunch of errors as the MInt tried to get its act together along with the only presidents with edge insricptions. 4) Within a few more weeks we should have a real good indication just how rare the Adam's errors are relative to the Washington smooth edges which will be reflected in the numbers from NGC and PCGS. From talking to dealers many were skeptical on how many were out there and not knowing this they were reluctant to buy in fear of a new batch showing up elsewheere in the country. 5) Another fear amongst dealers was that each time a president would come out we would see thousands of double struck and thousands of smooth edges which would therefore create saturation since there is only so much money to go around. Well I'm yet to see any Jeffferson errors worth mentioning and they have already been out for almost 2 weeks now. From what I read the Mint has their act together now and the liklihood of any significant future errors coming out is very slim. As you can see there is much more that these errors have going for them besides Congress ending the edge inscriptions.
The edges are going away? I doubt it. They just passed legislation for the Sac dollars moving the inscriptions TO the edge. And the amendment to the Mint funding bill does NOT remove the inscripions from the edge. It just forbids the mint from spending any money to produce them. So unless the amendment is changed the inscriptions will remain on the edge, but the production of the dollar coins will have to cease.
The legislation mandating removal of the edge inscription was flawed in many ways according to Ed Moy, the director of the mint. I think the main motivation for the legislation was pandering to the religious right about the possibility of leaving "In God We Trust" off the coins. Unfortunately, the legislation didn't specifically say the mint mark, date and "E pluribus unum" had to be moved, so the mint isn't going to implement anything until it is clarified. My bet is that the edge inscriptions will be abandoned, for a host of reasons. The best reason is that they are technologically flawed. However, the pander always wins in these situations and makes for great re-election campaign commercials.
As a member of "the religious right" I hope there not pandering to me. Remove "In God We Trust" from US coins for we trust everything but. That being said I have not seen anything 100% that the edge inscription will be moved. As a side note from my personnal observation the Jeffersons seem to have a lot higher quality control than the Washington and Adams dollars.
The Legislation does not specify that ANYTHING be moved. But like I said the new Sac dollar legislation DOES move the inscriptions to the edge.
Like it or not it is hard to do edge lettering on the scale they are attempting to do it. I have said this since the idea was first floated long before the dollars and I stand by it. They bit off more than they can chew.
I'm actually surprised they have done as well as they have. I think the country with the next highest mintage of coins made with a two part system like this is the British round pound. And most of their mintages are well under 100 million coins spread out over a 12 month period. We did 330 million in 3 months a rate twelve times as high. We are pushing the envelope as far as technology goes on these things. My understanding is that these coins are forced through the lettering machine at a rate of a thousand cons a minute. That is almost 17 coins a second. If the machine sputters or fails for one second per minute, in an hour you would have over a thousand error coins. Or say th setting that determines how far apart the pressure wheel is from the edge die and the distance increases one millimeter. That is enough to result in coins with extremely weak letters on the edge. For every minute that the operator doesn't notice it a thousand "error" coins are made. I'm sure the pressman doesn't "hover" over that machine, he has other duties and responsibilities as well.
No, because the legislation that stops the mint from spending money to produce edge lettered dollars is part of NEXT years appropriations. It would stop the dollars beginning with the Madison dollar. (Unless we are operating under a continuing resolution at the time.)
