The U. S. Mint’s American Eagle gold bullion coin program debuted in 1986, and this called for the creation of several new collar sizes for the four-piece line-up. There was bound to be some trial and error as a result, yet the number of mint error coins actually escaping careful inspection at the mints has remained extremely small for the American Eagle series.

This amazing gold one-ounce coin dated MCMLXXXVI (1986) is just such an error, a coin struck almost entirely out of the collar. In fact, just a trace of the collar’s reeding is visible along the reverse rim. Both sides reveal tripled images of all peripheral elements, as a consequence of the coin’s unrestrained expansion between strikes.