The gang at the Mint 1966-7?

I've heard a rumour that the error silver dollars, 1966 small beads, 1967 double struck and diving goose and other errors were made by mint emplyees for profit. Was that true? I see the mint is after people with copper quarters but they never came after anyone for these? How did they get through quality control?

 

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Oh. Canada.

 

Eh.. You need to provide references.. Eh

 

Try finding one! Wikipedia has a nice article on Canadian Silver dolllars, but leaves out 1966 small beads and Diving Goose. Globe and mail archives are useless. Were there any newspaper articles on this? People Disciplined, Fired? Here people talk of a 65 small bead mule with 66 obverse, but no back story of these errors.

 

The "diving goose" $1 coin is due to a rotated reverse die.

https://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php?coin=1-dollar-1967&

 

Where did you hear this?

 

Eh.. No you provide them for us.. Eh

 

It's just a rumour. I can't find any references. THat's why I'm posting here.

If I asked you to make a list of good die errors in increasing bizarreness , it would go like: mule, die rotation, double strike, planchet error. It seems they got to planchet error but not on the silver dollars. Perhaps they were stopped before they put a nickel die to a silver planchet?

 

I bet 10 US dollars that it never occurred. After 50 plus years, a rumor becomes an old wives’ tale or an urban legend.

 

Satinidollar, Here's your evidence. You can donate $10 US to cointalk!

Well persistance paid off. It seems some poor Mint employee got screwed and jailed, Frederic Priebe.
https://www.newspapers.com/browse/canada/ontario/ottawa/the-ottawa-journal_1188

The coin dealer Hoffman who profited was jailed later
https://www.newspapers.com/browse/canada/ontario/ottawa/the-ottawa-citizen_9310

It seems there was a lot of monkey business that time with proof sets etc.
The Ottawa Journal (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) · 10 Sep 1971, Fri · Page 3

 

Your links don’t seem to work, but I’ll take your word for it. $10 headed to Coin Talk!

 

Satinidollar, Thanks for donating.

To get into the archives and find this I had to take out a 7 day free subscription. So that's what you must do to see these links and remember to cancel after you've found what you want.

 

CLIPPED FROM
The Ottawa Journal
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
29 Sep 1970, Tue • Page 17

'SMALL BUT VITAL COG': Sentenced to Year On Mint Coin Deal
By PHIL MEERE

An employee who for" three years breached Royal Mint security by striking ''coin oddities" for an "Irreputable dealer," was , sentenced Monday to a 12-month jail term. Frederick Prieber- 29, of ; 99 Goulburn Street, described by Judge T. . R. Swabey , as , a "small but vital cog in a scheme to reap high profits," admitted producing more than 2,400 of -the valuable oddities. He said he easily took them from the mint and was paid $2,400 for the job. ' - "He was tempted by promises of luxuries" which never materialized, said., the judge. , No' estimate has been made of how high the resale profit was to the dealer. The dealer has not - been charged but RCMP have not concluded their Investigation of ' the scheme..' . Priebe had been liable to a maximum 14-year sentence for "breach of 'trust",; and a maximum five ' years for illegally taking coins from the Sussex Drive mint.
Crown Attorney Colin Mc-Kinnon, who described the crime as "more serious than any ordinary criminal could commit" because Priebe was a respected member of the community, asked for a deterrent sentence. Priebe's defence counsel, argued the accused had "already paid dearly lor flu indiscretion" by losing his job and through the publicity the case has received
A press operator for seven years at the Sussex Drive mint, Priebe was charged with "breach of trust," between January 1967 and March, 1970, in defacing genuine Canadian silver, nlckle and copper coins; restriklng British coins; and striking impressions on unmarked gold and silver discs. An additional charge, relating to the period between January, 1969, and February 1970, charged Priebe with Illegally taking, money from , the rnint. The charges were ' laid in March by Sgt, G. W. Black following what Judge Swabey termed "diligent" investigation by RCMP into the affairs of various coin dealers handling "variety" coinage. After a preliminary hearing, proceedings of which could not be published at the time, Priebe pleaded guilty Sept. 15.
The preliminary was told about 2,400 copper pennies had been double-struck by Priebe and that he had sold most to an Ottawa dealer for 50 cents each.
He also struck gold" blanks with dollar faces and re-pressed nlckles, dimes, half-dollars and dollars, selling them for from $10 to $15 each.'. The British coins, blanks and bigger Canadian pieces - were supplied by the dealer. Court was told Priebe was "highly regarded by his employer" and that he has a wife and young child," A heart ailment suffered by his child was a source of financial drain - on Priebe, the court was told, , ' Priebe had earned $7,200 per year before he resigned the job.

 

• CLIPPED FROM

The Ottawa Journal
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
10 Sep 1971, Fri • Page 3

Ex-coin dealer admits mint racket Imperfect coins; imperfect crime
By JOHN FERGUSON
Former Ottawa coin dealer Rudolph Hoffman thought he had a novel way of obtaining coin "varieties," those one-in-a-miilion imperfect coins that sometimes slip through inspections at the Canadian Mint. He had a man inside the Mint who made them for him -thousands of them- which Hoffman in turn sold to coin collectors at highly inflated prices. The idea was novel, but it was also illegal and Thursday, when he was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison on three charges by Judge Robert Hutton. But as the sentences will be served concurrently with a seven-year sentence that Hoffman is now serving for importing marijuana there will be no extension of the time Hottman spends in jail.
Hoffman was charged with: Conspiring with Frederick Priebe, a Mint employee, and others between Jan, 1, 1969 and March 1, 1970 to unlawfully have in their possession a quantity of coins of a value exceeding $50 knowing them to have been obtained by a breach of trust committed by Priebe:
- Counselling Frederick Priebe to commit an indictable offence - breach of trust;
-"Giving benefits" to Darlene Ruddick, an. employee of the mint
Hoffman pleaded guilty to all three charges. Police testified that there were complaints dating back to 1965 that some coin dealers or dealer was obtaining the coin oddities, or "varieties" as they are known in the trade. The RCMP soon became aware that the oddities were not mint errors but the result of deliberate actcons on the part of a mint employee.
In September, 1969, the RCMP seized a number of imperfect coins which were on display at a com show in the St. Laurent shopping centre and were able to obtain a number of clear fingerprints from them. This led to the arrest of Priebe and a subsequent search of the mint employee's car and house turned up gold quarters and gold dollars and a number of gold and silver blanks.
In a statement, Priebe admitted to police that he had sold the coins to Hoffman.
In June, 1970, RCMP officers purchased one gold and one silver dollar by mail from Hoffman for which they paid $1,000 and in August, a gold quarter was purchased for $125. The RCMP learned that two other persons were acting as agents for Hoffman in the distribution of the coins. A subsequent raid on an hotel room at the Skyline yielded 66 silver quarters defaced at the edges, 40 dimes with penny inv pressions, 4,354 double impres sion pennies, 12 gold quarters, one silver dollar, one gold dollar, 82 silver discs or coin blanks of various sizes and 66 gold blanks of various sizes. Priebe was sentenced to one year in jail last September for his part in the coin oddities scheme. Darlene Ruddick was fined $5,OOO when she was found guilty of receiving more than $20.000 from Hoffman for pre- shipping $816,000 worth of Centennial coin sets to him in 1967. In passing sentence, Judge Hutton told Hoffman that the "most serious" effect of "his crimes was the "number of other people dragged into the matter."

 

So people at a mint can manipulate coins, the only reason they were caught is they were greedy if they would have stopped after lets say 10 coins of some real rarity coins and sat on them for a few years then put them out in the market they probably could have gotten away with it and made a lot of $ right

 

plain and simple greed and it led to their downfall

 

I'm looking for the court documents and I'll bet there's no mention of these silver dollars. I suspect the Mint swpt it under the carpet as it would have been a horrendous task to recover the few thousand made. There must be internal Mint documents that thoroughly investigated this. Perhaps they could be liberated with a freedom of information request? Then there are the coin journals of the CNA and ONA. They must have articles on these, but I don't have access.

I think if only a dozen or so coins are made with errors, they might just disappear into circulation. I always thought it remarkable that they found the 1936 dots. The problem is there are lots of error coins, most totally insignificant. It requires enough coins discovered with a significant visible error to generate a recognized variety. If these guys were smart, and they might have been, they would have shepparded the error coins through quality control and sent them in a bulk order to a coin dealer, possibly innocent or a confederate on the outside. This would ensure their discovery. An inconspicuous order for a couple of thousand coins could slip through, where as a metal detector might find an emplyee leaving with a dozen coins. Who knows, but you are right that greed did them in. Still a voyageur in gold would have been a pretty thing.

 

do you mean like:

• 1965 Circulation Strike Small Beads, Pointed 5 (Type I)
• 1965 Circulation Strike Small Beads, Blunt 5 (Type II)
• 1965 Circulation Strike Large Beads, Blunt 5 (Type III)
• 1965 Circulation Strike Large Beads, Pointed 5 (Type IV)
• 1965 Circulation Strike Medium Beads, Pointed 5 (Type V)
• 1965 Prooflike Strike Small Beads, Pointed 5 (Type I)
• 1965 Prooflike Strike Small Beads, Blunt 5 (Type II)
• 1965 Prooflike Strike Large Beads, Blunt 5 (Type III)
• 1965 Prooflike Strike Large Beads, Pointed 5 (Type IV)
• 1966 Circulation Strike Large Beads
• 1966 Prooflike Strike Large Beads
• 1966 Prooflike Strike Small Beads

From what I know, this was basically the beginning for the updated design, and as it went on they noticed parts of the designs that were problematic so they made tweeks along the way to try and get a design that struck well and didn't deteriorate quickly. they just kept making tweeks and seeing how it worked out as I understand it with no malicious intent.

 

Does Canada have a law equivilent to our Freedom of Information Act?

If you mean the 1936 dot cents, it isn't that remarkable, they weren't released into circulation.

 

Thanks John. For the most part I agree with you but here's my misunderstanding. The blunt and pointed 5's in 1965 were innocent, much like the blunt and pointed 7's in 1947. In 1965 the beads started small and due to a short die life they experimented with medium beads and found some angle too steep and so to lower it settled on large beads which had a better die life. This explains why there are no proof medium beads as it was a trial coin.
My only suspicion in your list is for the small bead mule with the 1966 reverse. Already in 1965 they abandoned the small beads in favour of the large. So why would they continue the small beads into 1966? To use up the small bead dies? If so why didn't they do that in 1965 before moving to large beads? I suspect, but can't yet prove that this mule was a subtle first attempt at creating a rare variety and led to creating the increasingly obvious errors of 1967.
If this were a detective novel where the serial killer leaves more and more clues as the story progresses, I'd write that from the 1966 mule they moved in 1967 to a little more conspicuous error of die rotation with a Diving Goose. The Inverted Goose is just too good to be true, an exactly 180 degree rotation is no accidental error. If that wasn't sufficiently mocking to the authorities, I'd write that they moved to an even more obvous double strike error, the Butchered Goose, but got caught before making the planchet error of a Gold Goose. It would make a great story and I wonder how much is true? Certainly some of it.