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I still have the Whitman folders (Lincoln wheat cents) that started my collecting obsession 58 years ago. I filled all but 6 slots from circulation - care to guess which ones?

The mint "manufactured a rarity" with the W Roosevelt dime in 1996 but did not repeat it after that. They do have a habit of overdoing everything (how many coins would it take to make a complete set of modern commemoratives?), and the Silver Eagle issues have gotten ridiculous. Here's hoping this W Lincoln is a one-time experiment as well.

My guess would be die damage, something like a die clash, where the obverse die was damaged from impact with either a misaligned reverse die or another coin. The curved depression runs through the fields but not Lincoln's hair, and distorts but does not obscure the i in Liberty.

Heritage doesn't usually accept consignments unless the total projected value of all the coins is $5,000 or more.

Congratulations and prayers for you all. Long days in the NICU are hard but the nurses there are the best. My granddaughter (three months old last week) came six weeks early and spent eight days in NICU.

What does the reverse side look like?

Looks like a raised line on the coin, which could be from a die gouge. Post-strike damage would be more likely to show up as a gouge in the coin.

There is no silver in any of these coins -the dime, quarter, half dollar and dollar are copper-nickel clad over a copper core. The copper-nickel will tone, not quite the same as the silver alloy in 1964 and earlier proof sets. This appears to be normal toning for clad proofs from the 70's.

I bought a Franklin half in a NGC holder a few years ago. The NGC label read "1952-S MS-64 FBL", and the dealer's listing included nice, sharp close-up photos of complete bell lines and a rather poor photo of the entire reverse. The mint mark was, of course, a "D" when it arrived. The dealer that sold it to me on line was quite embarrassed to get it back and vey quick to issue a refund.

I can contribute a few wheats, a steel cent, an Indian cent, a buffalo nickel and a V- nickel.. Send me your address - they have been sitting in a jar since the '70's so no charge for a YN.

"I buy cheap after the first owner lost $ on modern Canada coins!" I do the same with modern American issues, after watching almost all new issues drop by half or more in a couple of years.

Each "improvement" seemed to reduce the community aspect of the site. Up until a couple of years ago, there were half a dozen new journal entries a day; now it seems more like half a dozen a year. Journal entries identified the author on your home page; no more. Money Marketplace used to be a collector-to-collector site; now a dealer inventory list and eBay referral site. I'll probably drop my paid membership after this year.

I have about a 50% success rate at crossing over PCGS coins, but I have never tried to cross a PCGS FBL Franklin. I have a two full sets of FBL's ( minus the 53-S in both cases), one NGC set and one PCGS set, and I would be surprised to see more than 3 or 4 of the PCGS coins cross as FBL. Yet PCGS coins consistently sell for higher prices than NGC coins. Too many people "buy the holder not the coin".

Personal preference, but I like the look of the old "no-line" holders better than any of the new versions. More focus on the coin and less on extraneous stuff (graphics, logos, bar codes, etc.). When I have sent NGC-certified coins for re-holder, they came back in new plastic with the original cert numbers. Maybe they will also issue new numbers on request?

I'm still here but have not figured out the "new, improved" journals. I tried to submit one a couple of months ago, spent an hour or so writing, formatting and correcting it, then hit "Submit" and it vanished into the ether. Haven't wasted any more time on them, other than reading journals from the rare few that persisted until they found the magic key.