PCGS 50c 1970-S Proof Kennedy Half on Aluminum Missouri Shell Token PR-62

Zoins

How does a 1970-S proof half dollar get struck over an aluminum Missouri Shell's Coin Game token?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCGS-50c-1970-S-Proof-Kennedy-Half-on-Aluminum-Missouri-Shell-Token-PR-62/292286821586

https://www.pcgs.com/cert/10104922

Here's a close up of the undertype:

Here's what the undertype normally looks like when it's not overstruck:

mkman123

I think some mint employees were bored that day. I just wonder how many of these rare errors are actually intentionally made....

Zoins

I wonder how these got out of the Mint.

Timbuk3

Cool !!!

mustangmanbob

@mkman123 said:
I think some mint employees were bored that day. I just wonder how many of these rare errors are actually intentionally made....

Agreed. I believe TPG should not call any of that junk a "Mint Error" and they should be rejected as just junk. By grading it, it give legitimacy to mint employees creating "errors" for personal profit using US Government equipment and supplies.

William

We reported on these pieces last year: https://coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2017/10/1970s-coins-struck-on-aluminum-game-tokens.all.html

William T. Gibbs, managing editor, Coin World

Zoins

@William said:
We reported on these pieces last year: https://coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2017/10/1970s-coins-struck-on-aluminum-game-tokens.all.html

William T. Gibbs, managing editor, Coin World

Thanks for the link!

Do you have any information on who discovered these and when?

Zoins

@mustangmanbob said:

@mkman123 said:
I think some mint employees were bored that day. I just wonder how many of these rare errors are actually intentionally made....

Agreed. I believe TPG should not call any of that junk a "Mint Error" and they should be rejected as just junk. By grading it, it give legitimacy to mint employees creating "errors" for personal profit using US Government equipment and supplies.

I read that these “impossible” errors only recently gained legitimacy as errors. They used to be called something else and did not have the same stature as true errors back in the 70s or something like that. Unfortunately, I don’t have the post where I read that right now. Can anyone confirm?

CaptHenway

@William said:
We reported on these pieces last year: https://coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2017/10/1970s-coins-struck-on-aluminum-game-tokens.all.html

William T. Gibbs, managing editor, Coin World

Makes you wonder if the crooks working at the SFAO ran the whole dang set through the press!

To answer the OP's question, there was a gang in the late 60's through the mid-70's making deliberate errors (I would call them fake errors, but they were made in the SFAO using genuine U.S. Mint dies) and smuggling them out of the building in the oil pans of fork lift trucks. The guy who serviced the fork lifts off site was part of the gang. The Treasury has generally expressed indifference to their existence.

Zoins

Thanks @CaptHenway. I found this article with more info on the San Francisco Fork Lift coins which mentions you:

https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2011/06/two-members-of-the-ccac-denounced-the-propose.all.html

Of note the coin in this article is from 1975 but the article mentions mink mark-less coins from SFAO and SF Mint over the 1968 to 1990 period. If the fork lift oil pan caper ended in the mid-70s, how did the later coins get made and escape?

Here’s another article indicating the SFAO period was from 1970-1976 and that the two-tailed quarter could have been made there:

http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n30a11.html

On the COINS mailing list Tom DeLorey wrote: [...]
Also, there were a lot of deliberately created errors made in the San Francisco Assay Office in the 1970-1976 period, that were snuck out of the Mint in the oil pans of fork lift trucks. See Appendix B of the 7th Edition of the Judd pattern catalog for some of these deliberate errors. Another one was a 1970-S Proof quarter struck on a 1900 Barber quarter. I am not aware that any two-tailed coins were made by the same person who made the other errors, but it does seem plausible that it could have been.

Zoins

Here is some good information on the caper from Coin World in their Proof 1975 No S dimes article.

https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2011/07/both-known-proof-1975-no-s-dimes-surface.all.html

it is also a matter of historical record that during the early to mid-1970s, a group of San Francisco Assay Office employees clandestinely struck Proof “error” coins. These coins were of the striking and planchet error categories, most of them so deformed that they would never have fit into the hard plastic case used for Proof sets in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Proof errors that were clandestinely struck were not of the die variety category (under which the No S dime is classified).

The illicit error coins were smuggled out of the facility in the oil pans of forklifts, into which they had been dropped through the oil filler spout. When the forklifts were sent outside the Mint facility for servicing, confederates of the assay office employees retrieved the “error” coins, which, after the oil coating them was removed with gasoline, were then sold into the marketplace.

Coin dealers became suspicious of the types and quantities of Proof error coins entering the marketplace. Eventually, some collectors who knew how the coins were smuggled out of the Mint let the secret out. Several reputable coin dealers then contacted Bureau of the Mint officials. The ensuing investigation uncovered the conspiracy, and officials shut down the clandestine minting operation. The supply of Proof errors from the facility dried up about 1976 and 1977, according to error specialists active in the 1970s.

BuffaloIronTail

@mkman123 said:
I think some mint employees were bored that day. I just wonder how many of these rare errors are actually intentionally made....

There was a whole lot of that going on during that time period.

Pete

ricko

Where there is profit to be made, human ingenuity will rise to the occasion.... One of the few axioms of human nature....Cheers, RickO

CaptHenway

@Zoins said:
Thanks @CaptHenway. I found this article with more info on the San Francisco Fork Lift coins which mentions you:

https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2011/06/two-members-of-the-ccac-denounced-the-propose.all.html

Of note the coin in this article is from 1975 but the article mentions mink mark-less coins from SFAO and SF Mint over the 1968 to 1990 period. If the fork lift oil pan caper ended in the mid-70s, how did the later coins get made and escape?

Here’s another article indicating the SFAO period was from 1970-1976 and that the two-tailed quarter could have been made there:

http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n30a11.html

On the COINS mailing list Tom DeLorey wrote: [...]
Also, there were a lot of deliberately created errors made in the San Francisco Assay Office in the 1970-1976 period, that were snuck out of the Mint in the oil pans of fork lift trucks. See Appendix B of the 7th Edition of the Judd pattern catalog for some of these deliberate errors. Another one was a 1970-S Proof quarter struck on a 1900 Barber quarter. I am not aware that any two-tailed coins were made by the same person who made the other errors, but it does seem plausible that it could have been.

The "No-S" missing mint mark errors made from 1968 to 1990 are believed to be legitimate human errors. The coins themselves were found by random people who got them in the mail. They are not controversial.

The wild Proof "errors," such as Proof coins struck on wrong or multiple planchets, are believed to have been deliberately made and smuggled out of the mint in the fork lifts. Not sure of the exact dates they got away with this. Could have been as late as 1976 or 1977. Remember that the 1776-1976 Bicentennial Proofs were struck in both 1975 and 1976.

Mr Lindy

I view these custom made SF proof error coins the same way I view the five 1913 Liberty 5c except that mint employee who owned all 5 at once apparently got access to the die shop too.
Has anyone from the Gov't stepped in to confiscate 1913 Liberty 5 Cents ?

Lindy

Zoins

@LindyS said:
I view these custom made SF proof error coins the same way I view the five 1913 Liberty 5c except that mint employee who owned all 5 at once apparently got access to the die shop too.
Has anyone from the Gov't stepped in to confiscate 1913 Liberty 5 Cents ?

Lindy

The 1913 Liberty nickels haven't been confiscated and they are worth a lot, millions even. Seems to indicate these could be worth a lot too.

JBK

@Zoins

The 1913 Liberty nickels haven't been confiscated and they are worth a lot, millions even. Seems to indicate these could be worth a lot too.

I don't equate 1913 Liberty nickels with intentional "error" coins.

What makes an error coin valuable is that it was a mistake, which these were not. If they are uncommon enough and if there is demand then they will have some value regardless of their origin, but legality is not assured for this type of thing.

As I recall the mint (Secret Service, actually) has gone after coins that could not have conceivably have left the mint legitimately (proof coins that never could have fit in the cases of issue, for example). They obviously don't go after all if them, but If an exotic contrived error comes to their attention who knows what they might do.

Mr Lindy

The Gov't goes after 1933 $20, 1974 P and D Aluminum 1c, and 1964D Peace.

The safety deposit box hoard of proof errors sold off years ago gave error collectors the official Gov't OK.
These are legal to buy, sell, own.
It no longer matters if a grossly larger proof error coin cannot fit back into it's mint issued proof set plastic. Its All Good !

I too was a skeptic, but then these goofy proof errors got the official OK.

Like the 1913 Liberty 5c I'm guessing these will appreciate in value, if bought right.