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Want to turn one cent into $3,000 overnight?
Just have the kind of luck an unemployed Oregon woman experienced during the spring of
1995. She found a Lincoln cent, struck in 1969 at the San Francisco
Assay Office, that,
because it was struck from an improperly produced die that had a
doubled date and
legends,
makes it one of the most desirable of recent U.S. coins. She sold the coin to a coin
dealer for $3,000! Read the
complete story here.
Although finds such as this are rare, collectors and non-collectors have discovered, in
recent years, coins that are worth much more than their face
value. Many of these coins
are die varieties or errors - coins that feature some abnormality that make them more
desirable than normal coins to many collectors. Others are coins with low mintages, some
even unknown until their unexpected discovery.
The weekly pages of Coin World are occasionally filled with the reports of coins found
in circulation and old collections that are worth more than their face value. Granted,
these kinds of finds don't happen every day, or even every month, but they do occur.
Knowing what to look for is important. Continuing through the 'Errors and
Goofs' section on CoinWorld.com is a start. . Reading Coin World magazine, especially the
Collectors' Clearinghouse column,
is another step along the path of knowledge, of learning what is valuable, and what isn't.
Coin Errors
and Goofs Index
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