While the nearly $2 million realized for the PCGS Proof 66 1894-S Barber dime stickered by Certified Acceptance Corp. made it the star of Heritage Auctions Jan. 6 to 11 sale, an undated Roosevelt dime struck on a nail more than a decade ago at the Philadelphia Mint also raised many an eyebrow. New Mexico collector Tommy Bolack paid $42,300 to buy the unusual error.

Full video transcript:

Good morning. This is the Monday Morning Brief. I’m Coin World Senior Editor Paul Gilkes.

While the nearly $2 million realized for the PCGS Proof 66 1894-S Barber dime stickered by Certified Acceptance Corp. made it the star of Heritage Auctions’ Jan. 6 to 11 sale, an undated Roosevelt dime struck on a nail more than a decade ago at the Philadelphia Mint also raised many an eyebrow.

New Mexico collector Tommy Bolack paid $42,300 to buy the unusual error, one of four such dime-on-nail errors circa 2000 reported to have escaped the Philadelphia Mint. Bolack’s purchase is graded Mint State 65 and encapsulated by PCGS. The dime dies were struck on 6-penny common nails.

Nails were used by Mint press operators for a number of years, according to a Coin World report, to dislodge any coins or blanks stuck in the press.

Bolack is noted for acquiring 10 of the 14 publicly known mule error coins struck in 2000 at the Philadelphia Mint. Those errors feature the George Washington obverse from a State quarter dollar paired with the Sacagawea dollar reverse and struck on a manganese-brass clad dollar blank on a coinage press dedicated to dollar coin production.

Three hours after the Jan. 6 sale in Florida of the dime on nail error, Jon Sullivan from Sullivan Numismatics in Charleston, S.C., sold while at the Florida United Numismatists Convention in Tampa an undated Lincoln cent struck on a finishing nail. The error was one of seven such errors reported to have been struck in 1977 at the then West Point Silver Bullion Depository.

Sullivan’s cent-on-nail error only had the top half of the nail bearing part of the Lincoln portrait on one side and elements of the Lincoln Memorial on the other.

On Jan. 7, Numismatic Guaranty Corp. received for grading and encapsulation three Lincoln cent struck-on-finishing-nail errors that were part of the original seven California dealer Fred Weinberg purchased in New York in 1977. From the three submitted to NGC, one bears the date 1977, one is horseshoe-shaped, and one is undated.

There is at least one other undated 1977 cent-on-nail error in private hands. In 1977, Weinberg was forced to turn over two examples he still had in his possession to the Secret Service after another numismatist to whom the errors were shown alerted U.S. Mint officials.

In 2015, dealer Sullivan also sold a 2000-P New Hampshire quarter dollar struck on a nail that is considered unique.

For additional information, read the full story at www.CoinWorld.com.

For Coin World, I’m Paul Gilkes.