It's very recent... but on a Canadian 10¢ 2003 I found while searching rolls, I found one (and it's a pretty lustrous coin) little dot raised between the "CA" of CANADA and the nearest veil of the sailing ship. Of course, IMO, it's very unusual... Looks very much like an error coin! Any advice is very welcome! Thanks Max
hya: We see it!!! hya: The left coin is the normal one, the other one has that dot ... in the angle of view, it's just under the first A of CANADA... you'll see! http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/1483/hpim1649oj2.jpg Thanks Max
Almost looks like the moon is there dont it. I just went through several rolls and have not spotted anything even cllose.. Stay tuned. Going to do some searching on this one. Is that a piece of fuzz by the C in canada or a die crack? really hard for me to tell.
Yeah, it's a total mistery... There really is a little dot raised there. And I doubt it was planned that way. For now it's there beside my computer and I'll keep it as long as I don't know what is up with it. I'll put it in a holder as soon as I find a good place for buying! If you ever find anything about it let me know! Max
It could be a Rockwell test mark. Dies are tested for hardness as part of the quality control process. The marked die is supposed to be discarded afterward. If it was mistakenly installed in a press, then you've got a very desirable die variety. Of course, it could also simply be a circular die dent.
Canadian dies are chrome plated and sometimes the plating will flake off causing a raised dot. They usually aren't any where near that large. (as for a Rockwell test, why test a die and then discard it? The test give you information about that die not other dies. So now you know how hard this die is and you discard it and use one that you don't know the hardness of?
Because whereas you now have a die where the hardness is known, it's also damaged and will mint damaged coins. When all the dies are made in the same facility by the same process, you do not have to test every example, you test every X specimens to insure that the items you are manufacturing conform to established standards. Think about a food factory. They can't eat every pizza roll they make, or even one from every bag. They'll test every batch by consuming a few, or examining them, but they won't go ahead and eat their entire production. Mmmm, pizza rolls... Fish
