I found some damage on the edge of this Van Buren dollar coin. Is this an edge lettering error or can be considered "missing edge lettering"? Thank you.
It's pretty beat up from circulation. There is a 'Weak Edge Lettering' listing, but I don't know what this entails. The wear from the circulation probably caused this.
I've handled plenty of MEL's and Weak Edge Lettering dollars - sorry, but your coin isn't a Weak Edge Lettering. The lettering is a -touch- lighter, but would not be considered a WEL. You can spend it, or put in your collection. Not an error.
Now that you brought it up Fred, I had no idea that Weak Edge Lettering was anything special. Are examples desirable or worth anything?
When the first Weak Edges came out (mostly Adams, at the time) they would bring around $25-$30, in PCGS or NGC holders, which isn't cost effective, obviously. I put my last ones up on Ebay a few years ago, and was lucky to get $20-ish for them. They are just too common to be of interest to 99.7% of error collectors, and with the real MEL's being so cheap, there's almost no interest that I'm aware of, in the Weak's.......
I can't tell what it is - I see the extra L - are there more extra letters, or is that the only one? Can you shoot a larger area of the edge? ...enough to see 6-8 letters/stars/etc. so I can get some perspective.