I recently heard (on the radio) that some US quarters were accidently minted using the metal stock intended for the Sacajawea Golden Dollar, and they were released into circulation, unknowingly. I heard that if you find one of these golden quarters, they are worth 10K on the collector’s market?
Is this true? I checked Snopes.com and found nothing on this.
I found this story which while not exactly like yours has the elements of it . I could see how this story could have been warped into something akin to the story you heard.
http://uss001.infi.net/denver/post/news/news0101b.htm
It says that a man got his hands on a new dollar coin before it’s release because the coin somehow found it’s way into a mint back of quarters . It gives the value of it as being between 5 and 10k .
I think you may have heard about the coin that was a Sacajawea dollar on one side, Washington quarter on the other, and struck on dollar coin metal. To my knowledge, only one has been found, and I think it went for about $31,000 at auction recently.
cabbage got it mostly right. There are at least three specimens known so far. I’ll be surprised if there aren’t a few more.
Read about it here
The mint is very touchy about error coins. It trys to get its hands on undistributed error coins still in the bank and destroy them. Which reminds me, I still have that torn up doller bill…I wonder if I should take it to the bank or spend the 35 cents to send it to the mint.
A woman in Michigan received 15 of them in change from a post office vending machine. She initially complained to the people behind the counter but decided to keep them anyway. She then took them to a coin shop where the dealer offered her $150 for each of them. She declined the offer and there has been no trace of her or the coins since.
The first one discovered sold on Ebay for $41,395. Another sold to a dealer for $41,000. The dealer was, no doubt, aware of this when he made his feeble offer but he may have been assuming that there would be a lot more of these turning up, which would drive the price down drastically.
They’re not quarters on dollar metal stock. They’re dollars with a quarter’s heads side (Geo. Washington) instead of a dollar’s (Sacagaweah & Jean-Baptiste). The size of the coin is the telling factor: it was the same size as the Sackie dollars.
[hijack] Occasionally, I will see pennies that have been anodized bright blue, gold, or green. Who does this and why?[/hijack]
Most likely, they’re just old, and the copper has oxidized. You know, like the Statue of Liberty.
Um, no. The US Mint does not ask banks to send back error coins. They would have no power to do so anyway.
Take it to the bank if at least 3/5ths of the bill AND one complete serial number are present. If both of those conditions are not met, your only option is to send it by registered mail to the Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, OCS/BEPA, P.O. Box 37048, Washington, D.C. 20013. The Treasury makes no promise that they will replace a bill that does not meet the minimums above, but it’s your only shot.