If you are a rare coin collector, you know it’s not always the perfect coins that are the most valuable. There are many criteria that make a coin worth lots of money in today’s currency, as well as several do’s and don’ts to take into account if you happen to find a rare specimen of coin out in the world.
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Most of the time, a past mistake in the printing and minting of the coin only raises the price when it is appraised in the present day. That includes the 2000-P Sacagawea transitional error dollar coin.
“I was the person who discovered the 2000-P Pattern reverse, or transitional error if you prefer. It was quite by accident,” says Tom DeLorey, a coin enthusiast who is credited in many collector circles with originally finding the flaw. “After the Mint PR man demonstrated the coins being used in a variety of vending machines while the cameras rolled, I got to hold and examine one and I made some mental notes as to the design.”
The types of mint flaws DeLorey was searching for included planchet errors (mishandled preparation of “blank” coins), die errors (where lettering, numbers and images are misprinted on either side of the coin) and strike errors (uneven printing or wrong sized planchet pressing, to name a few commonplace ones).
“The very first issue of the Sacagawea coins came in Cheerios boxes starting Jan. 1, 2000, but those coins were packaged in such a way that you could not see their reverse,” DeLorey continues. “Then, when the dollars received their first general release through Walmart in late January of 2000, I went and got some and noticed that the tail feather design had been changed.”
DeLorey recounts that the U.S. Mint denied any variance or mistake, but the coin’s designer informed DeLorey that he had “changed the tail feathers at the last minute to better represent the white tail feathers of an American bald eagle.”
This misprinted 2000-P Sacagawea coin is commonly referred to as a “mule” because of the mismatching of an obverse die and reverse die combined together. Only 19 examples are known to be out there, all in mint condition, with an average sale price between $15,000 and $50,000.
There are a few other rare coins that are worth big bucks today due to a variety of minting errors. Here are some of the top coins to be on the lookout for.