1812 Cent Stamped M -new member

Hello all,
I am new to the forum, and not exactly a coin person. I have had the coin in my possession for many years, I have kept it all this time just for the fact that it was dated 1812. That being said, I have been trying to track down the reasoning why this 1812 large cent has the letter M stamped into the coin. I was told by a person on another coin page, that this was the stamp for "misprint". Any help would be greatly appreciated on this.

 

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Welcome to cointalk the M looks to be stamped much later in its life it was probably a "lucky" coin for someone that's name started with a M. It sucks because it decreases its value if that matters to you at all. But I would keep it just because it's a large cent.

 

"M" for misprint?? That would take the mint way too much time to stamp each coin in a defective batch with an "M". What happens with errors are that mint workers scan the batch to try to find errors, if one coin has a error than every coin in the batch would be melted because when you have a error, especially a die error, all the coins struck by the die would be an error. The production of that batch is stopped and all coins are packaged and sent to the melting furnace to be melted and made into new coins. Currently they crush a coin and give it a "Waffle" looking appearance. Than the waffles will be melted and turned into new coins.

The mint never counter stamped coins though, not for any reason at all.

 

Search for Counterstamp.

 

First, welcome to the neighborhood, George!

I have to disagree with coinman1234. If the Mint found an error, they wouldn't melt the entire batch, nor would they crush the coin, giving it a waffled appearance.

Yes, the error would be removed from the production run, but the rest would go through.

As for "waffled coins", they are produced from dies that have been defaced with a waffled design. Sometimes, these coins are released for sale by the Mint along with the defaced dies.

Chris

PS. By the way, the "M" that was struck into your coin is nothing more than PMD......post-mint damage.

 

The "M" doesn't stand for "misprint", George, it's just a counterstamp struck on the coin by someone for no apparent reason. The mint doesn't do this, so it would probably be someone's initial, or have some other meaning to whoever applied it to the coin.
There is a documented "M" counterstamp in Brunk's reference, but all known examples are on English coins. Counterstamps of English origin just don't appear on U.S. coins. It's a U.S. issue, but is nearly impossible to attribute to anyone. A nice old coin with an 1830s(?) counterstamp. Thanks for showing it.

Bruce

 

I have a feeling we could come up with some "M" counterstamped US coins pretty quickly....what are you looking for?

 

I have a tidbit of trivia stuck in a corner of my brain, and as I recall, some gold coins minted in the 19th century had "CAL." counterstamped on the reverse while still in the obverse die to identify them as having been struck from a special supply of gold from California....

 

Thanks all for the varying wealth of info. I had another collector a while back tell me that the military did this stamping to determine how much soldiers actually spent into the local economy, but am sure that this is just speculative as well! Oh well, back into the drawer it goes I guess. Thanks again for the information you all have provided.

 

I think they destroy the whole batch made with that die if it is a die error such as a die scratch, die crack, Doubled Die, cud, Etc. Then again you know more than me and I'm pretty clueless with errors except for the basics. They do not destroy every coin with a planchet defect or struck through foreign object though.

Thanks for the correction Chris

 

I think you are right on that. (Wow, I am horrible at giving accurate info today) Thanks, I though the "Cal." mark was struck into the die. After seeing you post I looked it up and saw employees did it and I guess I was wrong.

 

With all due respect, I also think that it is a major die error they will indeed trash an entire batch or at least search them (they did this for the missing edge lettering GW dollar coins once they discovered the error).

As for waffled coins, the ones I have seen are indeed waffled by a process separate from the minting process,niot struck fropm waffled or defaced dies. I own some German waffled coins and they are clearly done this way, and from the pictryes of US ones it appears to be a similar process.

 

I wonder why they would continue striking coins waffled after an error?? What would be the point?

 

Yeah, we could , Jeff, but they wouldn't be "legit"

Bruce

 

How far back did they waffle coins?

 

I think they started waffling in 2003.

Waffled coins are NOT done with "Waffled Dies" - it is a big machine that takes coins deemed unworthy for release and "Cancels" them basically.

This video isn't the greatest, but go to about 1:30 into it and you can see what one looks like:

 

So, it would be safe to say they didn't have a machine like this back in the early 1800's. I was always under the assumption that very few of the old coins were destroyed.

 

The "M" is a counterstamp applied outside the mint. It could mean anything really, a single letter is hard to track down its purpose. It does not mean misprint though (at least in US Mint terms).

 

The "waffling" machine was put into use by the mint sometime in the late 1990's or early 2000's.

When they discover a serious die error they do destroy all the coins from those dies that are still in the individual presses holding bins. It would be too difficult to track down pieces that had already been mixed in with the output of other presses and too wasteful to condemn the days output from all the presses.

The mint has never released the waffled coins for sale directly. The waffled coins coming on the market are the result of people either purchasing scrap from the mint (GSA sales), or from purchasing scrap from the large companies that do buy it. Usually the scrap is repurchased by the companies that make the coinage strip for the Mint.

 

There is a collector market for counter stamped coins, and in this case the counter stamp may actually make it more valuable.

OP, the coin also looks harshly cleaned. Not sure if you did the cleaning, but it's generally not a good idea.