Clipped quarter...after mint damage or not?

Bochiman

I received this quarter in change from a vending machine at work today (after using 6 sacagaweas and setting them loose back into circulation ).

It is hard to tell from my crappy picture (in the attachment) but in the areas I have circled, it is like someone had a circle of butter and a very hot knife and pressed it down lightly.

I can't see any scuffing, no raggedness (like I would expect from filing), nor any telltale sign that this was done after the coin left the mint.

Anyone seen anything like this? Any ideas?

Regrettably, it is an obviously circulated coin, but, if really a mint error, I think it is cool.

Thanks,

Ron

airplanenut

Looks real to me... the clip is at 5:00. The weakness at 11:00 is the telltale sign that it's genuine (the Blakesly effect, or something like that)... all ligitimate clips will have weakness opposite the actual clip.

Bochiman

Wow!
Thanks for both things Jeremy....the posting of the pic and also the quickie explanation.

May not mean much to many, but this is the first error/clipping I have found since I was a wee lad (about 26 years ago) when I was last looking at coins but I thought the "problem" coins weren't worth anything.

Now, what would cause this and how common?

airplanenut

When the planchets are cut from sheet metal, if the planchet doesn't get fully cut out, or if it gets cut out where the sheet ends, a clip will occur--when that happens, the side opposite the clip loses pressure, thus the weakness.

grip

To me it looks like a cud,with the (blaksley effect).Anyone have another opinion?.
Al

airplanenut

Oh, here's my favorite clip... I love the color, and clip made this coin just too cool (esp. for $10)... it shows the weakness really well:

airplanenut

<< <i>To me it looks like a cud,with the (blaksley effect).Anyone have another opinion? >>

A cud would have a blob of metal on the rim--this coin is sliced down, so it can't be a cud. Also, there isn't, so far as I can figure out, any reason for the weakness if there's a cud--I've never seen it before.

Jeremy

seanq

I'm not sold on this being a Mint error just yet. Do you have a picture (even a lousy one) of the other side of the coin? A true clip will show as weakness on both sides of the coin, not just one.

From the pic, it looks like the rim and reeding are fully present. If you look at the edge, its the rim thinner on both sides (not just toward the reverse)? Also, the area you circled as possibly being Blakesley effect is not exactly 180 dergees from the primary area of rim weakness.

Since this is a clad coin with what might be a very small clip, another diagnostic you can look for is "inversion". I think it was Neil Osina who first observed that on the rim of a clipped clad coin, the clad layers often look reversed - the cladding will look like it is in the center with copper on the top and bottom. This is an after-effect of the process used to cut the blanks, as the shearing forces of the blanking punch push one clad face and the copper core down toward the other face. On a coin without a clip this effect is minimized by the upsetting process, but on clip it can still be evident.

If it passes muster then it would likely be categorized as a "disk clip", meaning the coin is still essentially round and the only evidence is the rim weakness. Most of the Statehood Quarters I've seen have had much larger clips, I've only seen Connecticut quarters with disk clips. The one in my collection set me back less than $10.


Sean Reynolds

Edited to add: My work monitor has much better resolution. I'm now 99% sure this is damage and not a clip. The clincher is that I can now see the rim tapers on only one side of the "clip". The coin looks like it might have been in an encasement that flattened the rim.

dorkkarl

does not appear to be a mint error.

K S

Conder101

It doesn't look like a clip to me either. And neither is Jeremy's cent. The cent IS an incomplete planchet, but it is because the planchet strip had a defect in it not because it overlapped a previously punched area of the strip. I would call Jeremy's cent "struck on defective planchet" not "clipped planchet". And not all clipped plancet strikes show the Blakesley effect. It is a good indicator of a legitimite clip but not foolproof.

bushmaster8

[q... all ligitimate clips will have weakness opposite the actual clip. >>



Not true. MOST legit clips will show the Blakesly effect but not ALL.