Collector’s Edge

Q: I got hooked on coin collecting as a teenager in the 1960s, and among the things my friends and I looked for in Lincoln Cent rolls were coins with die breaks. We especially liked the ones where a raised line between letters BE in LIBERTY made it read BIE. There was even a club for those errors at the time. When I recently sent my coins in to NGC for attribution and grading, I got them back with a note saying that the die breaks were too minor to recognize. What gives?

1942 1 Cent (BIE) Click images to enlarge.

A: NGC receives many such coins for attribution. Some submitters check the Mint Error box, while others check the Variety box, and some even check both. That can be heartbreaking because NGC won't attribute these small die breaks under either service for the simple reason that they're just too common. This is especially true of Lincoln Cents from the 1950s through 1968. The huge mintages of those years, combined with the US Mint's reluctance to pull worn and cracked dies in a timely manner, produced hundreds of thousands of such Lincoln Cents. During the 1950s, especially, the three mints seemed to produce a high percentage of flawed coins showing extreme erosion and various cracks and chips in the dies. It may be that the dies weren't being properly hardened, but it was clearly evident that cost control was far more important than quality control.

A subset of the coin hobby arose around BIE breaks, which were quite prevalent, as well as other recurring oddities. One of these was the "cracked skull," in which Lincoln's forehead suffered a die crack along his hairline. These are minor flaws that are not of much interest today, though, as the writer indicated, there once was a BIE Guild for collectors of these coins. In fact, author Jean Cohen published a truly amazing book titled The Classification and Value of Errors on the Lincoln Cent that included carefully drawn illustrations of every known minor or major flaw for Lincolns through 1969. I purchased this book a few years ago simply for its artistry, as it represents a prodigious effort on her part. Sadly, however, both the BIE Guild and the market for such minor errors or varieties (take your pick) have passed into numismatic history.

Q: I have about a dozen Buffalo Nickels with chin whiskers, which I'm told is caused by the dies coming together. I looked at the NGC website, but these varieties are not listed as eligible. Why can't I get them graded with chin whiskers on the label?

1913 5 Cent T1 Chin Whiskers Click images to enlarge.

A: This is a similar situation to the one described above. The so-called "chin whiskers" are indeed the result of a die clashing episode in which a planchet didn't feed into the collar, and the dies struck one another. The result was often a raised lump on the reverse affecting the legend E PLURIBUS UNUM and an impression of those letters underneath the Indian's chin—hence the familiar name for this condition. It seemed to occur frequently during the first decade of Buffalo Nickel production, and it affected nearly every date/mint for the period. Unfortunately, it was so routine that examples have only curiosity value today. As a general rule, die clash impressions are not certified by major grading services, though there are notable exceptions. Several dates/mints of Morgan and Peace dollars having clashed dies have been assigned VAM (Van Allen-Mallis) numbers and are attributed by NGC under its VarietyPlus® service.

Images courtesy of of VarietyVista.com (BIE) and maddieclashes.com (chin whiskers).