As more and more people are taking to coin collecting either as a serious hobby or a means of investing in valuable goods, there is a greater demand for coins of every type. Rare, mint condition coins are fetching escalated prices because of this increase in demand and decrease in supply. Because of this fact, not only are collectors looking further a field to add to their collections but also they are willing to take coins with a lower grading. They are also willing to diversify their collection a little further. All of this is accumulating to make all coins increase in value and error coins are no exception whatsoever. The most important factor in determining the price of any coin, including error coins, is the rarity. If there are millions of coins in circulation it is unlikely that even those in the best condition will fetch large amounts but because of the nature of error coins it is unusual for their to be a large amount of them in circulation at any time.
About error coins
In any manufacturing process there are always rare mistakes made. With coins these mistakes can be anything from misprints to an emission or a blotch on the surface. While a blotch or a blemish on a coin is usually enough to downgrade a coin from an MSPU to a CU, with error coins the grading system virtually gets torn up and thrown away. That, though, is why experts say that coin grading is an art and not a science and this is particularly true when it comes to error coins. Anything from a glitch in the machinery to a blunder from the designer can lead to the creation of error coins and usually these errors are noticed quite early in the minting run. This means that very few error coins are ever actually circulated (if any at all) and are usually reclaimed, melted back down and re-struck correctly.
A history of error coins
US mints now produce billions of coins on a daily basis and very few of these coins are actually inspected before they leave to be put into circulation. The result of this is a number of error coins. However, error coins are not always created by accident. Mint workers have been found and heavily prosecuted for selling intentional error coins to collectors and investors around the world. This is because of the very high prices that are now associated with these coins, but again this hasn't always been the case.
Prior to the 1960s coin collecting had more to do with the beauty of designs and age of coins than it did with the rarity of a coin. Error coins were looked on with a certain degree of contempt and were discarded as viable collectors coins. They sold for pennies, if anything at all making them highly undesirable to everyone. In the 1960s though they gained a little respect and that small amount of respect for what had previously been referred to as FIDOs (Freaks, Irregulars, Defectives and Oddities) grew and grew to make them some of the most expensive coins now available.
Classifying error coins
There are three basic types of error coins. The Planchet error, The Die error or the Strike error. Error coins are referred to using this simply P-D-S system although a coin can obviously have more than one error. The type of error will have little to do with ultimate value of your error coins as this is primarily a result of how sought after the coins are and how many are in existence.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
