I recently purchased a lot of silver coins and in it was the 1983 P PCGS MS 69 Olympic silver coin, HOWEVER the coin itself is a 1984 P coin, it is NOT the coin the PCGS holder says it is. At first I thought it could be a fake, but the rest of the coins I received are all all genuine and when I looked up the coin this is what PCGS said about it. Why would the coin itself be a 1984 P, but slabbed as a 1983 P? I loooked at they are two different coins altogether. Am I missing something here? Did PCGS make a mistake? I normally don't purchase these types of coins, but for the price of 5 silver dollars and 2 pf 70 Presidential dollars for 105.00 I'd say it was a steal. It's more than just a data entry error it's a slab error! LOL Cert Verification #: 11429277PCGS Coin #: 9605Date, mintmark: 1983-PDenomination: $1Variety: OlympicMinor Variety: Mint Error: Pedigree: Country: The United States of America Grade: MS69 Mintage: 294,543PCGS Price GuideSM Value: $43Holder Type: StandardPopulation:1,696
The TPGs make a mistake every now and then. A slab error not like a Mint error and, while interesting, is usually not worth much.
I was at a show in Atlanta, and was looking at a 1919D MS66 standing Liberty Qt. It was slabbed. The only problem, it was a 1919. The seller did not know it. I have found several others also, of different coins. So, they are out there and you may find a 1919D in a 1919 holder. Keep looking. -O)
PCGS refers to these as "mechanical errors." If you want it fixed, you can send it off to PCGS and they will fix it for you at no charge. No promises, but I've had them fix mechanical errors for me in the past and they even paid for shipping both ways. Think about it, if it's a big enough error (which it was in my case - a potential $100,000+ error) they will go out of their way to fix the issue. In my case I also received several free submissions which was nice. In your case, it seems like a minor error, but I'm sure they'd fix it for you if you wanted to. For a slab collector there may be a little bit of extra value in owning the slab as an error, but maybe only a few bucks at the most. It's not just PCGS that messes up from time to time... I've seen plenty of mechanical errors on NGC coins as well. Many times the error isn't by the company, but it's by the submitter. If the person submitting the coin writes 1984-P on the form, that is how it's logged into their system and if the graders don't catch that it's a 1983-P, then you'll get an incorrect label. But yeah, the graders are still partly to blame for not catching it. The most frequent slab errors I've seen are missing the mintmarks on Standing Liberty Quarters (as noted by Searcher), missing the "VDB" on 1909 Lincolns and 1909-S Lincolns, and just messing up modern commemoratives in general (sometimes the wrong date, sometimes the wrong mintmark, sometimes the wrong type of coin altogether).
Thanks everyone for the quick reply. I didn't know these types of "slab errors" existed, much less people who collected them. Ya learn something new every day. I'll probably just keep it like it is for now. Once again. Thanks. If anyone has any errors like mine feel free to post pics of them. I'll do the same when I get more time.
