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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Howard Black, post: 3414848, member: 97119&quot;]A while ago, we bought a $100 bag of the Jim Thorpe dollars from the U.S. Mint. I put them all into 2x2s and wrote some identifying info on each 2x2, but they stayed in the drawer since then -- my health is very poor, I&#039;ve been in and out of hospitals so much that I&#039;ve lost count, and pretty much everything has slid to the back burner.</p><p><br /></p><p>The other day I decided it was time to grit my teeth and start listing them on fleabay. I also decided that I should mark them as to &quot;regular&quot; (clockwise from obverse) or &quot;inverted&quot; edge text.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fortunately, I&#039;d put them into half-dollar sized 2x2 holders so that buyers could look in and see the edge text, which enabled me to examine each coin without removing from the 2x2.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the process of doing this, I found one coin with a &quot;mistake&quot; the likes of which I&#039;ve<i> never</i> seen (either in real life, or in online images).</p><p><br /></p><p>On the edge -- at each of the cardinal directions -- there was a very dramatic gouge. If not for this coin having come straight out of a sealed Mint bag I&#039;d have thought it to be some strange <i>intentional</i> sort of PMD.</p><p><br /></p><p>But it&#039;s even <i>stranger</i> than the fact that it happened <i>in</i> the Mint.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I examined it, it became obvious that the damage was inflicted <i>during</i> the minting process. The gouges occurred <i>after</i> the coin was struck, but <i>before</i> the lettering was pressed into the edge.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the gouging totally obliterated the area where the edge text <i>would</i> have been stamped. But, in an area where the gouging <i>wasn&#039;t</i> deep enough to obliterate the metal, the text was stamped <i>over</i> the gouging (an impossibility if the gouging was inflicted <i>after</i> the edge lettering was applied).</p><p><br /></p><p>I have <i>no</i> idea how this could have happened. I had given some thought to it being feeder finger damage, but the way it&#039;s located in those <b><i>four</i></b> locations doesn&#039;t seem consistent with that. (Or does it?)</p><p><br /></p><p>One thing that <i>isn&#039;t</i> that obvious in the photos is the nature of the gouges, i.e., it looks like each one was made in one <i>very</i> forceful stroke, made in <i>one</i> direction (there is a clear difference between the &quot;entry wound&quot; and the &quot;exit wound,&quot; with raised (coin) metal on the exit side).</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, although the cutting extends from the obverse to reverse sides of the edge, it is <i>much</i> deeper in &quot;roughly&quot; the center, leaving two flange-like portions. This is easier to see with the naked eye, but it <i>is</i> visible in the photos. I put &quot;roughly&quot; in scare-quotes because it&#039;s <i>not</i> a case of the middle layer of the sandwich behaving differently from the outer layers. This is evident because the deeper parts of the cuts are <i>not</i> precisely and evenly restricted to the coin&#039;s core layer.</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope to be able to post some better photos shortly, but the ones attached to this post are clear enough to confirm the above.</p><p><br /></p><p>If anyone has any clue as to what happened to this coin, or what effect it might have on the value, <i>please</i> don&#039;t hesitate to reply.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]906284[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]906286[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]906289[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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