Why fake a 1971 Kennedy half ...help me uncover the mystery

It's true people counterfeited 1's and Henning did nickels. But they didn't profit from it. The point of counterfeiting is to make money. Henning paid more in materials and fines than he realized in ill gotten gains.
And the guy who counterfeited the ones, passed very few over a 20-30 year period.
Maybe a few hundred. So technically he made a profit.
With not many ways to spend a counterfeit half, they are not making money on this venture. Machines don't take them, are you going to walk into a 7-11 or a bank with a bagful of these? It's idiotic.

 

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He must have posted that as I was typing my comment....didn't see it.

Still, I think any half dollars (these days) are a bad choice to counterfeit as they're rarely seen in circulation and thus attract much unwanted attention....

 

I have a strong feeling that, to Michael K, 1971 is ancient history.
I don't think that anyone can get him to understand.

 

Wait. Wasn't 1971 like, last Tuesday?

 

I made the assumption that nobody making counterfeits prior to 1979 would have thought to put a "P" mint mark on a coin. By the time P mint marks appeared in 1979-1980, the half dollar was still being minted for circulation, but it wasn't circulating to any significant extent. It just took TPTB a couple of decades to realize it.

The "minted for damaged-coin returns" idea is interesting, but this one still smells like "novelty" to me. I just can't figure out the target market.

 

People do strange things with Kennedy half dollars. I've pulled quite a few 'oddities' over the years that no sense as to what they were trying to achieve. Electroplated, buffed, initials removed, questionable weights and so on. I agree with those suggesting an artist practicing their trade for other, more profitable future endeavors. I keep such pieces for my continuing and never ending education in the hobby. Anyway, people doing strange things that people do. Don't lose sleep over it.

 

here's an idea:

The Kennedy Half in question was manufactured overseas to be sold/exchanged overseas where nobody would even notice.

This one just happened to find it's way to the USA.

Just a plausible suggestion...

 

A logical explanation indeed.

 

In high volume manufacturing and logistics this is called "strawberrying". The more you know!
I had just remembered reading the same thing. Here's a link to an article describing the debacle in full:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/feds_uncover_scheme_to_defraud_us_mint_out_of_54m.html

 

We need to think like the counterfeiters to really understand why, and it's apparent that it's not that easy to come to a logical conclusion for the most part.

 

This sort of make you feel for people new to coin collecting much less experienced coin collectors.