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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TheGame, post: 8057049, member: 82655&quot;]The other day, I was perusing ebay to pass the time, and I noticed an auction that was about to end for a 1979 Bahamas 25 Cents in a Franklin Mint &#039;Coins of All Nations&#039; coin card. One thing I instantly noticed about this coin was that it had a rather proof-like finish. This was unusual for two reasons:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Proof-Like FM 25 Cents are only listed for the years 1975-78.</p><p>2. The Royal Mint at the time generally made their coins with brilliant, lustrous strikes.</p><p><br /></p><p>The seller&#039;s pictures were so blurry that I couldn&#039;t make out a mint mark in its usual position, but I was able to determine that the coin in the card was indeed minted by the Franklin Mint. Compare these two examples from my collection:</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center">1979 (Royal Mint) Business Strike</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]1396234[/ATTACH] </p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">1979-FM Proof</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]1396235[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Notice specifically the difference in the distance between the water from 4:30 to 7:30, on the Royal Mint business strikes, this gap is much wider. While the images were blurry, I was able to tell the coin in the card did not have the wide gap, and so it had to be a Franklin Mint issue.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point, I looked up the card and found a seller who had multiple cards at $6 each, with a buy two, get one free deal. This was much lower than the auction that was about to end, so I pulled the trigger and bought 3 cards.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center">Today, they arrived. Here is the full card:</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]1396237[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1396240[/ATTACH]</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">And here is a closeup of the coin itself:</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]1396238[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1396239[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The thing I find most interesting is that this doesn&#039;t appear to be a particularly rare coin. This card can be found easily on ebay and every example I&#039;ve seen so far has this coin in it. Yet still, the coin isn&#039;t mentioned in Krause, numista, or any other reference that I regularly use. It does appear that I&#039;m not the first person to come to this conclusion though, as <a href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/coins-all-nations-bahamas-25-cents-1896320470" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/coins-all-nations-bahamas-25-cents-1896320470" rel="nofollow">this listing</a> does properly attribute the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ll end by paging our local FM expert [USER=78719]@7Jags[/USER] and asking for his thoughts on this coin.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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