Panama 5 Balboas 1975-76

coinkat

Anyone see these in the copper nickel composition? The mintage is 4,000 and 5,000 for the so called errors whereby the wrong reverse die was used that reference silver content- the silver content for the collectors- I suspect these were released for circulation. The Krause comments that these are errors but does anyone know if they were released?

seems to be a good question for the resident modernists

bidask

I have only seen in silver....and many of those have been melted.

7Jaguars

I think these may have been technically currency coins but IMO did not circulate - too much value and too large a piece regardless of error silver designation. I have never seen one less than mishandled AU....

coinkat

I am just curious about the surviving population-

Jinx86

Ive got a 1970 in my melt pile. So surviving pop. minus one

7Jaguars

Ck - I doubt there will be a definitive answer. IMO, very few melted & these come up fairly frequently on ebay, etc. I seem to recall seeing these in mint sets of the year and often available with the 1B of similar error status.

coinkat

Agreed- there is no definitive answer- I was thinking along the following lines- Are these really errors? And if so, what became of them? If they were not released for circulation, were any destroyed at the mint? In any event, it seems to be a modern question for which there should be some reasonable answers-

7Jaguars

Interesting thought re: error status - they are obviously not in the metal stated, but appear at least as commonly as the "non-error" bits...I am in general trying to figure out about the Franklin Mint (or even the Royal Mint) as to whether just because we have a mintage figure, do we have the authorized mintage, the actual mintage, the shipped/delivered numbers, net released, or??

Even the proof sets are, at least in my mind, in doubt...