Help! My dad has a coin he has kept that a customer gave him in the early 70's. It is a 1964 Kennedy half dollar, when he was going to put it in the register it fell into 3 pieces. The back of the Kennedy coin came off and in it was a mexican coin (possibly a 20 centavos) Sliced very, very thin. The mexican coin is a 1968 coin. My dad took this to several coin shops around 1972 but no one had ever seen or heard of anything like this. the cut on the back of the Kennedy is so perfect and flawless it doesn't seem to me that any one could have done this on their own. It seems as though it came that way from the mint. Could this be possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated. P.S. I checked some links to magic shops and it is nothing like what they have. Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Stephanie. Welcome to the forum. The mint uses solid planchets, so that particular arrangement could not occur there. Besides, the pressure exerted by the coin press would cause the metal to flow together on the top and bottom pieces at the rim where they join. What you have is a variation on the the "box coins" described here. They are usually made on very sophisticated machines by highly skilled metal workers.
