I found a 2000 New Hampshire quarter without a mint mark. It kinda confused me because I have never seen a state quarter without a mint mark. Does anybody know anything about this?
It's most probably a filled die. These get filled with grease and metal shavings and can completely disappear. If you look closely there will probably be a little sign of the mark and/ or other design isn the area which is also affected.
Each state quarter seems to have some one feature that "attracts" grease and dirt becoming filled and disappearing on the coin. On the DE quarter it was the last E in STATE, on the CT it was the ER of CHARTER or OA of OAK. On the NH it was the mintmark. There are some other issues that have been reported with missing mintmarks but the NH is the most commonly one encountered.
I had one just like this...yes its a filled die...NH was the one with the most known fill dies on the mint mark I think... Speedy
Why is it that the state quarters are having so many problems with the stamping process? Every time I turn around I am hearing of an error or mistake. Ryan
Most coin designs have months in which to be tested and revised before they actually go into production. Many of the state quarters do not get this long testing period. Also they are producing nearly as many quarters for each state in a ten week period that they would normally take almost an entire year to produce. Try and do anything five times faster than normal and you are going to have problems crop up.
Also - have any coin as popular as SQ's are and you will huge numbers of people examining the coins looking for every irregularity, die crack, ding, dent, stain, filled die and what have you so that they can try to sell it for a profit to all those collecting the coins.
