1964 Roosevelt Die Crack?

[Erik in NJ]

Thought I'd try a Colonial-era house down the street where I've become friendly with the owner and his wife. Tried a higher piece of the property first, but too much junk there to detect. He said he was going out and I could check out his lawn, but it was so manicured and green I didn't want to dig there--you know the type of lawn...too perfect to start cutting plugs that will turn brown.

I did listen for a while to signals and picked out two good ones. The first turned out to be a Roosevelt 1964 dime at about 8 inches...not a good sign but at least it was silver on my first dig. I cut a careful plug and repaired it.

Second target was much deeper at 10+ inches and I see a modern baseball in the bottom of the hole --really not a good sign and then the top of a soda can giving the sweet deep signal--a worse sign . OK so the strata have been disturbed...a shame really and I don't want to dig up the guy's lawn looking for more targets.

Looking at the dime tonight I notice that the I and We in "In We Trust" are very week compared to the other letters and so is the 4 in 1964. Also the top part of the L and I in LIBERTY is weak as well. I turn the dime over and look at it with my 10X jeweler's loupe and I see what appears to be a die crack extending up to the rim along the I in UNITED and down to the leaf. If you zoom in you can just see it in the pic--much easier to see in person.

I assume the die crack is causing the weak part of the strike on the obverse. Is this a known error coin? Or do dies crack all of the time and this is just a common mis-strike that I happened to notice?

 

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[DiggerGal]

Wow!!! Awesome! That looks like it just fell out of the mint! Great recovery! HH!

 

[huntsman53]

Nice find and coin! The Die Crack on the Reverse of the coin which came from the Reverse Die would have no effect on weakness of lettering, date digits or other details on the Obverse of the coin unless the Reverse Die split apart and one piece or pieces were offset from the other piece or pieces. However, if that happened, the minted coin would normally be tossed in a reject bin, the Die removed to be destroyed and another Die installed in it's place. Usually the weakness of the lettering and Date digits on coins are from grease slightly clogging the letters and digits on the Die. However, since the affected letters and digit are very close to the rim of the coin, the weakness in this case could be the result of Die Deterioration.


Frank

 

[Erik in NJ]

Thanks for the concise explanation Frank! I noticed the weak letters after I took the photo with my iPhone as they really stood out in the pic and then I confirmed it with my jeweler's loupe. I had originally thought that this was caused by a filled die (grease) and yes all of the affected letters are near the rim of the coin towards one side. I then flipped the coin and noticed the die crack along the letter I on the reverse (much easier to see in person) which oddly enough is in the same part of the affected coin. I thought, hmmmm, that's interesting.

So it went from a mundane silver '64 Roosevelt to something a bit more interesting.

Thanks for your post

 

[huntsman53]

You are more than welcome! For a long tome now, it has been my goal to help others with questions about errors and oddities on coins as well as if a specific coin is a Variety or not. While your' Dime find has no real additional value due to the Die Crack and the weakness on the lettering and "4" of the Date, you can feel good that you found a Dime that is worth approximately 14 times face value which makes for a fairly nice day in the life of a Metal Detectorist!


Frank

 

[sutphin]

BY CRACKIE ERIK I SEE IT ONLY AS YOU SAY AFTER ZOOMING IN. DONT KNOW MUCH FOR THE ANSWER YOU ARE ASKING FOR, BUT I WILL SEE WHAT COMES UP AND LEARN.

 

[NEPADIGGER7]

I agree with Frank I've seen a lot of letter being very light because of grease! Great job though!

 

[Erik in NJ]

Thanks guys (and gal ) for the comments. I wasn't even going to post the coin, it being a mundane new silver and I was disappointed when my two trial holes didn't reveal anything old at this house, but I thought the lettering and die crack were not something you see every day.

 

[allen]

Sweet little piece of silver!

 

[Garrett424]

Crack or no crack it's still a sweet silver coin find. It looks like it was dropped this morning.

Congrats.