The unusual shape of the 7 under the 8 on a 1918/7-D Indian Head 5-cent coin is a legend with collectors and can be seen even on low-grade examples.

Stack’s Bowers Galleries offered an extraordinary Professional Coin Grading Service Mint State 64+ representative with a green Certified Acceptance Corp. sticker that brought $99,000 at its Feb. 28 Baltimore Rarities Night auction. 

PCGS has graded just two in MS-64+ and another two in MS-65, one of which sold for $258,500 at Heritage back in 2013, making the Stack’s Bowers offering feel like a comparative bargain. 

Inside Coin World: The two 1866 5-cent coins with different alloys: Two different 1866 5-cent coins and Arkansas paper money that was redeemable in bacon, among other things, are among the subjects of columns in the March 25 Coin World.

The cataloger praised the soft pastel toning, bold strike and satiny luster, while also identifying a small planchet imperfection on the Native American’s neck that potentially limited the grade. 

David Lange explained the probable sequence of events that led to this error in his book The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels, explaining that the die used to strike the coins was hubbed with two different hubs, the first dated 1917 and the second dated 1918. At that time, available technology required several hubbing impressions to complete a die. It is also considered a doubled die because of being created with different hubs. 

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