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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cpm9ball, post: 3453548, member: 24633&quot;]Welcome to the neighborhood, Milena aka [USER=102786]@mil3na[/USER] !</p><p><br /></p><p>The first thing you should do is stop watching all of the videos on BoobTube. Granted, there may be some beneficial videos, but how is the beginner to know which is which? All those people care about is the &quot;points&quot; they receive for the number of views. Accuracy of information is the last thing they care about.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for your coins.... </p><p><br /></p><p>The color of the IA SQ is not unusual. The coin has been subjected to all sorts of conditions in the 15 years it has been in circulation. What color would you expect it to be if it had been handled by the greasy hands of an auto mechanic? Or, someone mixing cement? Or, a garbage collector? It&#039;s impossible to say why it turned that color, but it is safe to say that it did not happen at the Mint.</p><p><br /></p><p>The missing letters of the DE SQ are probably the result of a grease-filled die. All machinery needs to be lubricated. Grease and debris (dust particles, etc.) can be passed along to the planchets which is then passed along to the surfaces of the dies. As the dies strike planchet after planchet, this grease and debris can build up in the recesses of the die and become very hard. As a result, the letters, numbers or other devices seem to disappear. It is totally random where this build-up may occur, but it is very common and does not add any value to the coin.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As for the WY SQ, I am just guessing because the images aren&#039;t clear enough for me to tell, but it may have been caused by a satin finish die that had to be removed from the service of producing Uncirculated Mint Sets after being polished. </p><p><br /></p><p>In 2005, the Mint began making all of the coins for the Uncirculated Mint Sets with a satin finish. Several years later, they discontinued this practice, and I believe it was because the dies just did not last long enough to make it practical. I say this because I used to regularly buy $250 bags of SQ&#039;s direct from the Mint to search for high-grade specimens, and I noticed that many coins produced after 2004 had a &quot;splotchy&quot; finish (for lack of a better description) in some parts of the fields which I attributed to being polished. </p><p><br /></p><p>Although some people might disagree, I concluded that this was caused by the disintegration of the satin finish on these specially-prepared dies, but the Mint decided that they could still have a useful life being used for making business strikes for ordinary circulation. I believe that this is what you see on your WY SQ, and it just happens to look similar to the horse&#039;s head (pareidolia!)</p><p><br /></p><p>Chris[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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