Error or Damage

I have this quarter. I think it is a mint error. What do you all think?

 

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It was damaged sometime AFTER leaving the mint. Not a mint error. Take some time to learn about the minting process and you'll always know the difference.

 

Post Minting Damage, AKA PMD

This looks like a squeeze job. This quarter was placed in a vice with something else (or the vice had something on it which caused those indentations) and then squeezed really hard to see what would happen. THat flattened the rim and made the quarter look that way.

 

The first pictures aren't so great but these 2 are quite clear. Some things don't add up with the vice theory. Like how the rim disappears from half the coin, but those indentations in the middle of the coin don't really line up with the missing rim. Also curious how the half circle indentations (especially clear on the reverse) seem to be a match for a quarter of the same size. Finally the obverse and Washingtons mouth have an anomaly. Looks like a dental xray scan and you can see his teeth!

 

either way, post mint damage

 

Just like dies move metal to fill the recesses and raise the devices on the coin, pressing the coin in a vise will flatten those devices. Try it, you'll see.

 

Chances are we'll never know precisely what did it; all we know is it's not possible for that to have happened as part of the minting process.

 

What has me kind of stumped is how Washington's face isn't mangled, but while then looking at the reverse and that deep indentation almost in the middle of the coin. So if it was a vice of some sort, wouldn't both sides of the coin have similar damage on each side in about the same place? I guess the coin could have been hit very hard with something on each side at different times. Like a hammer type object I suppose.

 

Once again, I'd suggest learning how coins are minted.

 

Not if the quarter were samiched between two different objects in the vice...

 

Ok thanks for the replies so far, I made an HD video for you all to show even better detail and to show how the reverse indentations perfectly match the.. angle/diameter? of another quarter. On the Obverse, in the indentations there is something blue in color...(full screen 2:22 into the video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1DeGpvcBE

 

Contact teachmind. He'll probably agree with you. Unfortunately, I've read several books on the minting process, so I'll have to disagree with you.

Chris

 

I agree this is Post Mint Damage. Not an error.

 

For those of you who can't stand to watch purposeful damage done to coins please look away now!

I took a quarter and squeezed it in a vice first to flatten part of the rim, then squeezed it between a PEX copper ring fitting and a screw in the vice to create two different formations on either side.

@Kevin Christensen your quarter was probably squeezed between another quarter and something else. I can go make one for you but don't want to ruin another set of quarters.

 

Thanks for the demonstration, that does look similar. I could understand someone squeezing a quarter once by itself in a vice, but why would someone do it multiple times and also put other objects with it?

 

Boredom?

 

You ask "why?"....to which I reply, as someone else so aptly did earlier this week

 

I did a similar demonstration sometime last year to a member who kept insisting that his Cent was not PMD. I don't think he agreed

 

I do not think this coin was minted this way. Really, just study how coins are minted and what mint errors look like and you'll be able to find mint errors, they're out there. If you don't learn about the minting process and what actual errors are then you'll spend lots of time chasing damaged, corroded, or plated coins that will be nothing more than a waste of your time and worth nothing more than face.

 

@phankins11 you know that coin is going to come back.