by Len Ratzman – California Numismatist – Vol. 6 No.2 (Summer 2009)

When a mint error is first discovered, a predictably lengthy process is begun involving multiple recognized experts in the field to examine and scrutinize the coin’s authenticity under high magnification to separate a bona fide error from a manufactured counterfeit.

Ideally, after sufficient time and examinations have been made, the coin is either accepted or rejected by the numismatic community. But, in reality, there is a third possibility – unending disagreement among the experts. This outcome, of course, leaves many of us who are looking for definitive answers in relative limbo.

If decades go by and recognized, numismatic authorities still are conflicted as to the authenticity of the coin, what then? If, for instance, someone tried to buy or sell a specimen with this error to a dealer, another collector or at auction, how could they vouch for the legitimacy of the error and, in turn, ask a realistic price? This article is devoted to one such enigma that the author discovered by accident.

In a relatively recent attempt to determine if the Smithsonian Institute’s buffalo nickel collection was missing any specimens after all these years, an email inquiry was sent in early January to Mr. Richard Doty, the senior curator of numismatics for the Behring Center.

Sent from the American Museum of Natural History Behring Center where the coins are stored, Mr. Doty’s e-mail responded, “Your inquiry was passed to me. We do have a set of buffalo nickels, only lacking the 1934 two-legged and 1916 doubled die and 1918/7 varieties.”

Nineteen thirty-four, two-legged? When anyone specializes in one coin and finds (after decades devoted to researching that coin) that a variety exists unknown to that collector, it’s a very humbling experience.

A search of the Red Book, several Internet population reports, and reference books containing buffalo mint errors revealed many mint errors were listed but no mention of any two-legged varieties. (more…)

On August 16, the day the new Thomas Jefferson Presidential dollars were released to the public, Chuck Chichinski of Bellefontaine, Ohio, went to his bank and obtained two rolls of the dollars. Having read a report on the www.coins.about.com website that a doubled die reverse existed on the Adams dollar, he quickly went to work to see if any of the new Jeffersons he had obtained had a similar affliction. By the third or fourth coin in his first roll, he discovered that he had found his first Jefferson dollar doubled die reverse! It was similar but more major than the one alluded to on the www.coins.about.com site!

He called me to report his find on the same day and mailed two of the coins to me for attribution on the next day. Upon inspecting one, I found that it was not only a doubled die that was similar to the Adams doubled die that Chichinski had seen in Billy Crawford’s, Die Variety News #9, (the variety alluded to on the www.coins.about.com web site) but that it was almost identical to an earlier find that was reported by my co-columnist, John Wexler in his August 20 Varieties Notebook column that we share alternately in the first and third issues of Coin World every month.

Both the Washington and new Jefferson reverses displayed arrowhead shaped hub doubling (and some traces of hub doubling to the west on the Jefferson dollar) that appear to have their origins in the folds of drapery bunched up on Liberty’s right arm directly below the doubling.

The area of doubling on all the Presidential dollar doubled die varieties reported thus far (which is at least three for the Washington dollar and one for the Adams dollar) represents the virtual dead center of the coin’s design. This is an important key their attribution because specialists believe they are the result of tilted hubs that were seated into proper position during hubbing.

In 1997 when the first doubled die cent was discovered that was produced from dies presumed to be made via the single-squeeze hubbing process, (showing on the coin as a doubled earlobe along with over a dozen other areas of doubling in Lincoln’s hair), I first proposed that a tilted hub seated into position by the force of the single impression of the hub was the most probable cause. Since that time most specialists have come to agree that this is the most probable explanation for most (if not the vast majority) of significant single-squeeze produced doubled dies. (more…)