It does to me. But actually I’ve got a mint mark very similar to that D on a 1944-D cent. What’s relevant about that is who’d counterfeit a D mintmark on a 1944 cent? That’s why I want another shot (...or two, or more) of this D mint mark.
Mintmarks have been glued on before too. Slice it off another D, and stick her on. The terminal toning look around the MM is a part of that I'd think. If that's what happened here, it looks like the MM didn't come off in one piece. Breaks, you dab some gorilla glue like its your hair, and you stick your mintmark bits hoping the terminal toning allows you to get away with it looking unmodified
Difficult to get a closeup better than the original, but I'm still working on it. Does appear to be rotated to ever so slightly ccw of 12 at 1145.
i think the mintmark has been flattened from wear at the very least if not other contact damage. it could be an RPM that's merged at this point even, I can't rule it out. I don't think a picture solves the problem no matter how many there are, but figuring out the rotation, and then what die pair it should be and then the placement of the mintmark, quite possibly either puts it in the "most likely genuine" and really worth the gamble to send for authentication, or clearly "Fake", and not worth spending the money to have it confirmed further as fake. The dies don't lie, they make the same thing over and over. The only reason it's as hard as it is is because Dimes are small and the more wear they have, the harder it becomes. I think it's easy to detect the fake Mint State 1916-Ds. I haven't had to go to the rotation or mintmark placement step, the D is usually just really wrong, or too big, or different color and stands out.
A strike abnormality could have shaken it up. Any number of variables could have done it. Quite a few of the newbies here searching for errors posted awesome pics of distorted marks but with nothing more than that or wear or damage or a combo thereof. We need more pics of the mark. These newbies could put this mark right in our hands, the way they take pics. We had that quality, here, we got a shot.
Yeah, I agree with Mountain man, I'm as far as I can go with this at this distance, I think it's worth the gamble from the pictures, and the rotation, if it is in fact at 11:45, the placement seems right for Reverse die #1, but that's as far as I can get with it. I think I'm well over 75% on it, it's a dog, but I think it's genuine. I'd feel good about sending it into ANACS on a 10 for $100, or 12 for $120 grading special. or a deal with one of the other reputable companies, if available that's low cost. At the end of the day you just need authenticity confirmation. it's likely not getting a grade anyways with it's condition. I'd save some bucks and send it to ANACS or ICG and see what they say, I'm certain it will come back details cleaned or environmental damage, or both, but if you intend to sell it or pass it on, authentication is going to be key to doing it or everyone interested in buying will question it's authenticity every time you show it to someone. If you don't own it, I'd say "just stay away from it" and look for one already graded. I would LOVE to hear back from you if you do send it for authentication to hear what the results are, and I wish you the best of luck!
I'll be sending it off tomorrow morning to anacs. I'll be sure to post back with results. Thanks all. That was some good reading on the 4 dies. That actually made me slightly less skeptical as I believe it matches up pretty well with #1 rotation and mark placing.
The image that John Burgess cites I can't find on my computer; I think I copied it from a post on the CU forum years ago. The die rotation info is very helpful. To me, the mintmark position does not fit any of the 4 shown above. The MM itself most closely resembles #4, I think, but the position does not match, imo.
wow I wasn't sure you'd still be around! post was a long time ago. These new pictures are far superior to the ones I had found on a previous post, and I tend to agree with you on your assessment, the placement is too far from the leaf for #1, if anything with flattening it would appear even closer I'd think. I still think it's likely worth the shot, just not an expensive TPG to find out for sure. You can really only get so far with pictures. I'd like to inspect the rim, the edges around the mintmark under high magnification and do the rotation thing myself because the rotation thing can be difficult and inaccurate if eyeballed to get it right. Even if it's a fake it's likely worth something to someone, just not 16D prices. I'm not sure how selling them would work but people sell henning nickels frequently enough to make me think it's fine as long as you are clear about it and don't misrepresent it. Anyways, I look forward to hearing the results.
I do think that combining the information on the die rotation with the mintmark position and apperance should be enough to establish authenticity, or not. Perhaps Insider will join the thread, as he does authentication for ICG>
I had some time this morning and wanted to try something out simply because this whole thing gets my curiousity juices flowing. I went and found some previous auctions of the same die rotation as mine, drew some lines and compared. I'm not too familiar with the counterfeit process, but is it easy to get the mint mark location this accurate? I would agree that the D itself still doesn't look right. Mine is top right.
More information is always better. Nice research. What die do you think you have? Now I'm thinking die 1 instead of die 4. If the die rotations match up you may have a winner.
Definitely fake. I can’t see how this coin isn’t immediately suspicious to everybody. It may be a genuine dime, but the mint mark is added, without a doubt. The entire coin is probably counterfeit, and was cleaned to make it appear more authentic. My bet is that the coin and slab are both counterfeit.
Congrats Dmarq! and they gave it corroded and cleaned too which I totally expected. Well I guess I'm a little better at identifying them in circulated then I give myself credit for. No idea what the details grade takes you down in value, but It's genuine and that's awesome. still it's a bigtime winner now that it's authenticated. Thanks for coming back with the results!