$10 Indian mint error?

Animalkeeper

I bought a 1911 eagle about a year ago. Had a bad rim ding at about 8:30 (opposite her nose) so I got it for melt. I had intended to put it in a bezel and wear it but it's in AU condition, kind of pretty, and I knew it would get all scratched up so I set it aside (got a different coin for the bezel).



I've been playing with a new digital camera and I broke the gold out. While I was photographing the eagle I got a loupe out and scrutinized the ding. Looked kind of odd and an awful lot like one of the raised edge stars except it's incused rather than raised (middle of the pic on the right side). Any opinions?

lordmarcovan

Do we know we're lookin' at a genuine $10 Indian, first of all?

It looks it to me, but I have only owned three of those and they were all in slabs- I never got to see the edges.

I do see what you are talkin' about, and that is pretty interesting.

Maybe it is something like those mysterious letters you see (I forget the term- retained something?), where hardened dirt or something accumulated in the die and then fell out, becoming a foreign object between the die and the subsequent planchets, causing a stray "ghost letter" or numeral out in the field of another coin?

(Edit: "Dropped Letter" is the term I was looking for. But of course this might be an entirely different phenomenon.)

But I don't know anything about that, or how (or if) it would happen with an edge collar thingamajiggie.

Pretty neat- it will be interesting to hear what the experts have to say on this one.

OffCenter

Interesting. Sure looks like an extra star on the rim. I don't know anything about collar design and how it's put on but it sure looks like it somehow got an extra partial star on that collar.

SilverBaron

Greetings.... NOT a mint error.... I have seen several of these with the star incused into the coin...various locations.... happens when another 10 falls rim down onto the "hit" coin.

Animalkeeper

That makes complete sense, SilverBaron. Thanks for info.

OffCenter

man, I didn't read the post well enough I guess. I thought the star was raised.........