2004 D WI Extra Leaf 25C and Doubled Ear Dime
HIGHLOWLEAVES
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The 2004 Denver Wisconsin Extra Leaf Quarters and Doubled Ear Dimes are unauthorized alterations of US Mint Dies by a Mint Employee and are Unpresedented in US Numismatics. Sam (CLADKING), Please tell us your insight as to why these coins are unprecedented, if you would. Thanks, Mark.
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Calling @cladking
Lots have been written about the quarters. Not too much press about the dimes though. Probably not near enough interest.
Lots of coins have been surreptitiously made and smuggled out of the mint but in most cases they are dates that were not authorized or various types of errors. Surprisingly enough most these coins are considered "legal" by the US mint while most moderns of these types are not. Even the 1970 errors have the green light.
Three things make the WI types different. The big one is they are regular coins that were redesigned and then released randomly (mostly in the SW) through normal distribution channels. But the big thing isn't so much the redesign as the tacit approval of the mint. If the mint didn't officially help these be produced they certainly did nothing to interfere before or after the fact. One is led to believe that these were desired to give states quarter collectors a little shot of adrenalin after interest had flagged a bit. If they had had a much wider distribution like the W mint quarters of more recent times or if they had gone unnoticed for a few weeks it would have been highly effective.
The mint certainly had motive since not only were they making billions of new quarters but these were each a 21c profit to Uncle Sam. More business meant more funding and more overtime as well as more hiring. The FED would have frowned on it but not very hard. Everyone was a winner.
Interesting conspiracy theory but I doubt a government bureaucracy could put together a plan like that and follow through.
Check out the grassy knoll overlooking the mint!
BHNC #203
Idle hands do the devils work....
Such things add a bit of spice to the coin hobby. Cheers, RickO
I doubt there was any "conspiracy".
More likely it just required two men and the tacit approval of the the bosses after the fact. It's not impossible a single man could do it but my understanding of mint procedures would suggest that one was needed to create the type and a second to keep the press operating. Beyond this we have only conjecture.
Of course it's not impossible that the entire thing was a fluke and wholly accidental but there are too many happenstances and the "marking" on the die is obviously intentional.
More likely the bosses were hoping something would get released and everyone knew it and then it did. People working in tandem is what people do even when they aren't even aware of every relevant worker.
Now we have reports from Coin World that a Denver Mint employee has been caught removing error coins from the Mint. He gets two weeks off is all. Unauthorized, intentional die manipulation of the 2004 "D" Extra Leaf Quarters and Doubled Ear Dime seems even more plausible at the Denver Mint. Very Interesting !!
as much as has been said about these by others and you as well, feel free to comment as much or little to my inquiry.
(a) have these, to your knowledge, been studied in-depth to see if a single set of dies produced the the high and one set for the low? (b) tying together the first question with this one, "how many are estimated to exist?"
any known secondary diagnostics/pups on either of these that could confirm single or more dies? perhaps it could confirm a hub alteration even?
It's highly unlikely more than one die was actually used for either of these and I've heard no reports to the contrary. Indeed, with most US coins made in the last century there was only one die used for varieties. Common varieties are ones where the die served out its useful life and scarce ones are ones that were caught early and the die destroyed. Of course there are exceptions to almost every rule such as the '70-S sm dt cent which had a few dies. Most of the coins got into circulation.
I know of no such study but I would assume somebody would have noticed different dies.
Every die is unique but modern dies tend to be so similar they are very hard to tell apart. I'm familiar with no significant die characteristics unique to these dies.
I think it's interesting that someone has not been fired for removing errors. I would guess that he was trying to exchange "good coin" for the "errors" and it was more a breach of protocol than "theft". Still though if such behavior can be overlooked it makes it far more plausible that producing a new version of WI Denver quarters can be overlooked or even, however limitedly, sanctioned.
There has been only one variety verified for each of the high leaf, low leaf and dime coins.