most valuable half ever found (I think)

bag and drag · Nov 30, 2010

I found this 74 half earlier this year while searching a bank box.

i noticed it because of the silver looking rim but upon closer inspection the coin was too thin and only weighed 9.5 grams which ruled out its being made of silver.
three different coin shops had no idea of what this was so I asked the owner of local shop to send it in for me for grading. I figured I was just throwing money away for the grading fee but i HAD to know what it was. this is how it came back from ANACS and the coin shop owner was somewhat impressed and didnt really want to get into what he thought it was "worth",but because he claims he collects errors he offered up a trade of one roll of silver quarters for my now graded half.
I have declined that offer and have now spent considerable time researching wrong planchette half dollar errors and have discovered that they can be quite expensive.
I cannot find an example of a half that was struck on a taiwan $5 blank.
surely this could not be the only one,anyone have any imput?
I have good pictures but cant seem to ge them to upload.
the ANACS slab says:1974 50c-struck on taiwan $5 blank 9.44 grams,fields tooled

AU58
I wish I could get pictures

AGCoinHunter · Nov 30, 2010

You gotta post some pics of this...

conpewter · Nov 30, 2010

Cool! What does it mean "fields tooled" so they think you wizzed it before submitting it?

Would love to see a picture, wrong planchet stuff is pretty cool.

bag and drag · Nov 30, 2010

"fields tooled" I have no idea other than the fact that looking at it from the edge this particular coin looks like a 90%er but is of uneven thickness and the reeding is only sorta imprinted on a little over half of the rim.the rest of the rim is slick looking and scratched and even kind of slightly mauled.the bummer is that now that it is in a slab I can barely see the rim.
looking thru 30x magnification at both back and front the coin looks a little off center and weak around the edges but otherwise looks like a regular business strike without much wear.
I wonder if a person can call ANACS and ask questions about a coin that was just graded?
living in semi- rural wv my coinshop options are limited.

being too ignorant to post my pics here is not good.
I can download and send them via email if anyone wants to see.
have been here a long time,just dont post much as dislexia makes me type slow.
B&D

AGCoinHunter · Nov 30, 2010

Here are the pics. B&D emailed them to me. Very cool coin.

bag and drag · Nov 30, 2010

"Amazing that you were able to decern this from other halves and not just chaulk it up to someone doing post mint damage."

I saw this coin immediatly as soon as i cracked the roll cause the rim was silver with no clad line.at first i thought i had found an error '74 on a silver planchette but the coin was too light and did not look like a silver coin fron the front or back.
truthfully i had no idea what it was until last friday when it came back.I must have shown it to a dozen coin people over the last several months and gotten several good theories but they were all wrong about what it was struck on.
I'm still not even sure that the US mint made coins for Taiwan?

FingerGrime · Dec 1, 2010

Interesting!

Ltrain · Dec 1, 2010

Too bad you didn't get a shot of the edge before encasement.

65gt350 · Dec 1, 2010

Great find.

Here is a link to an auction from 2005 that had a min bid of $695 for a MS65 example.

http://minterrornews.com/issue12.pdf
see item 21.

I am not sure of the rules on posting links so if this needs to be removed please do so.

HH,
65GT350

jrf30 · Dec 1, 2010

Awesome find. One of the best I've seen here! :icon_thumleft:

thurmownator · Dec 2, 2010

Very cool find !

The Taiwanese 5 yuan coin, minted from 1970 - 81, was 9.5g. So that must be what ANACS is referring; though that coin is CuNi:

http://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2962.html

Enjoy the high !

bag and drag · Dec 2, 2010

I think that the taiwan yuan coin is a solid alloy of copper and nickle verses our(US) clad coin design.
the main thing resembeling a silver rim other than color is the lack of a clad line on this one.

65gt350--thanks for the auction link.I never dreamed that there was such a large following of error collectors
B&D

kb4iqm · Apr 15, 2011

Thanks to Generic_Lad for bringing this thread to my attention. I found a 1976 Bicentennial struck on what appears to be a solid CuNi planchet. I posted pics of it in this thread.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,394507.0.html

The weight is only .1 gram lighter, so it must be a different planchet as that mentioned in this threads original post. I guess I'm going to have to send this out to be graded and verified to find out what it really is.

Bob