I bought a roll of MarshBillings Quarters from the San Francisco Mint and I noticed there was an indent on Washington's head. The indent is almost a perfect circle and is very prominent, at first I assumed it was PMD. But then I found a few more coins within that roll, that displays stages of the indent disappearing. I'm a novice coin collector I have a slight understanding of grease and excess metal build up that causes indentations on coins but is this what I'm looking at?
Doing an overlay, visually, of the marks, they don't line up as a die progression problem, so I'd have to vote for PMD and NAV, No Added Value.
My first thought was struck through but after looking more closely I think I see some minor displaced metal. That makes it PMD.
What can I do to learn how to determine if a coin has PMD or a legit error when i come across coins with dents or divots, or gouges. That come directly from the mint?
Maybe you guys could help me out with this aswell, this is a 1990 D half dollar, with 2 missing stars
The best thing you can do is to learn how coins are minted. Then when you see a coin that has an anomaly, ask yourself how could something like this happened at the Mint? If you can't explain it then ask yourself how could something like this occur? Only certain things can happen at the Mint but damage can occur a million different ways. As for the missing stars on your Half Dollar I'm thinking that area was filled with grease or debris when struck. That's nice in this case if that's what occurred but it's also very common.
First, welcome to Coin Talk! The coins you get from the bank do not come directly from the mint and here in lies how damage can occur at any point in the process. From the time they are minted, they are tossed into huge bags/bins and transported to a wrapping facility like H.F. String & Sons or Brinks or .......... Lots of machines and hands are in the process before it gets to you. If you intend on continuing to dive into the error realm (and we hope you do!), the website below explains a lot and is very useful. http://www.error-ref.com/