When you have a large percentage of the population checking their new Presidential Dollars for errors, it should come as no surprise that a whole cornucopia of minting errors, major and minor, emerged in a very short time. This photo gallery is a tour through the best and most interesting error coin types discovered during the Washington dollar error eruption of 2007. However, nearly two weeks before Chicago Ron’s auction began, there were already harbingers of things to come. An email from a central (bank) vault manager named Heather on Feb. 2, 2007, said, “We received the new Washington dollars from the Fed in Jacksonville, and about a third of them have lettering on the rim that is right side up, 1/3 have it upside down, and 1/3 have none at all. Is this normal for these coins? Love your site and thanks for all the help.” Who could ever have guessed how big this would become? The logical question, then, is, “if we can tell them apart, how come the grading services are slabbing them all as generics?” The answer is that the Denver coins display a minor secondary error of their own, in that the copper clad layer is supposed to show. The theory is that the plating bath, which imparts the bright, shiny gold color to the coins, had too much dissolved copper in it, which was causing the solution to adhere to the copper core as well as the surfaces. Because this was considered to be an anomalous event that couldn’t be relied on consistently, and because this plating bath could presumably be reproduced (faked) outside the Mint, the grading services elected to err on the side of conservatism and not indicate the mint of origin on the slab inserts based on the color of the edges alone. The only sure way to prove which mint a plain edge Presidential Dollar came from is to find the properly mint-marked coins from the same dyes, and present them for grading and encapsulation in pairs. If you submit the coins in pairs, with one coin being a plain-edge dollar, and the second coin being a properly edge lettered dollar from the same die pair, some grading services will grant you the originating mint designation on the insert. Check with them first, though, because not all services are offering this, and you must do the die matching yourself, which takes a certain amount of expertise and nitpicky patience to accomplish. When the Presidential plain-edge dollar story first broke in the numismatic media, everyone was using the term “missing edge lettering” because that’s what it was, plain and simple. But “missing edge lettering” has a lot of syllables in it, and it’s a mouthful when you’re chatting about coins with friends, so soon it evolved into “plain edge” and “smooth edge.” These terms were a great deal shorter, and they were easier to say. Then, the mainstream media dubbed the error the “Godless Dollar” and this was the byword of choice for a couple of weeks, but slowly “plain edge” gained currency over the others, particularly over “smooth edge.” “Smooth edge” had come to be perceived of as describing faked plain edge dollars, because anybody who had looked at a genuine plain edge dollar under a 10-times loupe could see that it was anything but smooth. The fakes, however, really were smooth, thanks to dremels and polishing wheels. So, how did this turn into “Missing Edge Lettering”? The grading services gave this designation to describe this variety on the slab inserts. But as noted, “Missing Edge Lettering” is a real mouthful, so dealers are using the term MEL instead. When they speak of GW MELS, they might be optimistic that future issues of the Presidential Dollars will also produce plain-edge varieties. So far, there are hundreds of JA MELS now (John Adams Presidential Dollars with Missing Edge Lettering,) so perhaps soon we’ll have a TJ MEL, and even a JM MEL. Already a successful businessman anyway, he saw an opportunity to make a huge profit and jumped in with both feet. He worked this opportunity for all he could, and in the end, you can see his results, stacked in scores of piles of 25 coins. Each one is a plain-edge Washington Dollar worth at least 75 to 100 times its face value. The science behind evaluating minting errors through the years had to be done based on speculation because the U.S. Mint itself wasn’t very forthcoming about its problems. Hopefully, the collector community and the Mint can build a better rapport in the future so that the lines of communication are more open, and people can deal with facts rather than speculation when it comes to understanding minting errors. Some of the best had to do with the finders of this coin, Mary and Ray Smith of Colorado, not being able to “make heads or tails of the coin they found.” Supposedly, the only way they knew it was supposed to be a Presidential Dollar was because it was in a roll with other Presidential Dollars! Others believe that they had heard about the Presidential Dollar plain-edge coins being found en masse, and like many other enterprising Americans, they went to the bank and bought some rolls, probably hoping to get lucky and make a few extra bucks selling their finds on eBay. Instead, they hit the PCGS jackpot and collected a $2,500 reward from PCGS president Ron Guth for being the first person to submit a blank Presidential planchet with edge lettering on it for grading. Since this time, numerous fake plain edge dollars and fake “faceless dollars” have emerged, so if you’re in the market to buy one, be sure you buy from an honest coin dealer or buy only coins in major grading service slabs. “Doubting Thomas” Newell, Bill’s father, wanted nothing to do with the Presidential Dollar error frenzy which was swamping his home state of Florida. Although some folks in Florida would eventually find thousands of plain edge dollars, “Doubting Thomas” didn’t figure that any of that good luck would ever come his way. His son encouraged him to buy a couple of rolls of coins, “just to see,” but Thomas was adamant. None of this tomfoolery for him! Finally, Bill decided to just go ahead and buy some rolls anyhow. He took them over to his father’s house and talked him into to taking a couple of them just for the heck of it. If no errors turned up, well, he could just spend them. His mother, Rose, who was a little more amenable to the project, selected a couple of rolls from the dozen or so that Bill had brought, and “Doubting Tom” grudgingly picked out a couple of rolls for himself. And then set them aside and forgot about them. Rose opened her rolls but didn’t find anything. Realizing that Tom wasn’t likely to bother opening his without a lot of prodding, she encouraged him to do so, which he did, and he quickly scanned them to prove that there were no plain-edge dollars to be found there and what a waste of time the whole thing had been. But then he noticed that one of the coins looked a little funny on the edge, so he asked Rose to take some photos and send them to Bill. Bill’s wife, Cher, sent the photos along with a question asking if this coin was rare or worth anything. They sent the coin to error coin scholar Tom DeLorey so that he could see the coin and then send it off for grading. NGC has graded this specimen MS-64 and the Newell family decided to dub it the “Doubting Thomas” Double-Edge Lettering specimen. A member of the Hillside Coin Club was going to bring a doubled-edge letter dollar to the meeting that night. The discoverer emailed the photo you see here. She put it up for auction on eBay in a Category Featured auction, and it was only by a stroke of bad luck that she only got about $1,300 for it. Someone else listed another Missing Clad Layer Washington Dollar error coin, also graded by NGC, a couple of days after hers. The other coin, however, only sold for about $870, primarily because it wasn’t featured. The obvious lesson here is that if you have a major error coin to sell on eBay, spring for the $30 bucks or so to make it visible to your potential buyers. Since Wayne isn’t an error coins guru, he wasn’t sure how to describe what he was seeing in any better terms than he already had, so he had his camera do the work for him. The photo was meant to say that “yes, the split clad layer is split enough and deep enough to hold up my razor knife.” He ultimately sent the coin to Tom DeLorey at Harlan J. Berk. The split was definitely visible to the naked eye, but the clad layer was very secure; there wasn’t any chance of it separating from the core. The coin wasn’t damaged at all by the insertion of the blade. Wayne says he inserted it very carefully and didn’t probe or cut with it.
