In last month's WINS Newsletter, I wrote a little about the riddler machine used by the United States Mint in sorting - by their standards - the acceptable coins from the non-acceptable coins. To the dismay of many coin collectors, the current riddler devices go a long way in keeping error coins from entering the coin market. The riddlers have virtually eliminated from circulation any coin that isn't essentially the correct shape and size. A few minor error types can still get through these devices - such as doubled dies, unplated Lincoln Cents, missing clad layers on the sandwich coins, small clips, cuds, blank planchets, laminations, incompletely punched blanks, struck-throughs, and of course die breaks and chips. But the major error types - such as off-center strikes, broadstrikes, die caps, partial collars, Multiple strikes, saddle strikes, chain strikes, indents, large clips, finned coins and bonded coins - are unlikely to make their way from the Mint to the outside world.

Other than filtering out most of the error goodies, are there any adverse effects on our coins caused by the riddler machines. You betcha! As mentioned in last month's article, the multi-level riddler screens vibrate very strongly so as to cause the coins or blanks which pass over them to bounce around on the screen, and over the holes, to separate the good pieces from the errors. Then the good coins bounce into a bin on top of each other. As you'll recall, the riddler machines are utilized several times throughout the coining process - before die striking and after die striking. So the process eliminates many errors, but the finished product suffers.

Many collectors lament the fact that shiny, new, uncirculated coins look ugly. They believe that new coins already have too many marks on them when they first arrive in commerce. Well, that's partially because the coins that make it through the riddlers have bounced considerably over the metallic screens of the devices as well as on top of each other; and partially because they are dropped into bins - on top of each other - several times during various stages of the minting process.

Then, if that's not sufficient to mark the surfaces horribly, the freshly minted coins are placed into large tote bins where they continue to rub against each other and be pushed into each other as the bins are moved about for storage and shipping. By the way, these bins are very large and very heavy so they're moved by forklifts, which isn't a gentle process. It's no wonder collectors are disappointed in the surface quality of their new coins. By the time a new coin arrives at your bank, it has already been through quite a lot. But that's not the end. There's still more rub to come. Please read on.

The U.S. Mint hasn't used counting machines for quite a long time. In today's world, the Mint weighs coins rather than counting them. But counting machines are still widely used by the counting rooms at the nation's major banks as part of the process of preparing bank-wrapped rolls of coins for distribution to the branch banks. There are also many private carriers which utilize the counting/rolling machines such as Brinks, Wells Fargo and Metropolitan Armored Car.

When these counting rooms receive the large, sealed bins of coins (or the sealed bags once upon a time) from the Federal Reserve Banks, they dump the coins into the counting-machine hoppers where the coins are mechanically counted and rolled. The coins banged and rubbed against each other in the hopper, then scraped through the counting devices, then slid to the phase where the paper wrappers are placed on them with the ends of the wrappers being crimped mechanically. Did you ever hear this process? If you had, you'd surely believe from the sounds that the coins are being eaten by the machines. So, the next time you examine an uncirculated coin from a fresh roll, you'll understand a bit better why the surfaces appear less than perfect. By the same token, when you find that pristine-looking coin from a fresh roll, you can marvel at the odds against it looking so nice. Thankfully, a few of them seem to escape comparatively unscathed.

On a side note, most of the better error coins that used to escape the Mint were uncovered at these private counting rooms. You see, the counting machines tend to jam when a misshapen error coin is encountered. The mechanisms stop until the machine operator intervenes to extract the jammed error coin. The error coin is then set aside and the counting machine continues until it encounters another jamming error. That is why so many of the misshapen error coins on the market have scrape marks or other damage on their surfaces. And, by the way, these counting rooms are where most of the major error coin dealers across the country acquired the majority of their error coins to sell to collectors. The counting room personnel swapped out the error coins at face value then sold the bulk errors to error coin dealers. Sadly, thanks to the riddlers - and to a lesser extent the newer style horizontal coining chambers at the Mint - there are far fewer error coins jamming the counting machines and finding their way to collections.

And speaking of weighing coins at the United States Mint ... about six years ago when the Mint was still placing coins in the smaller canvas bags, I bought a couple of $1000 bags of 1999 Susan B. Anthony dollars from the Mint. Since we all know that the Mint has an acceptable +/- tolerance for coin weights, a few slightly over-weight or under-weight coins will cause the bags to weigh properly, but be short or over on the actual coin count. This would explain why one of my $1000 bags of dollar coins, though it weighed out correctly, had only 997 coins sealed in the bag. Someone else likely has received a bag with more than 1000 coins. But the law of averages says that most bags will weigh and count correctly, even though a few of them will be slightly short or over.

Congratulations to Dave Noble, our very own WINS Secretary, who has recently been appointed as Web Master of The Fly-In Club. Fly-In is short for the Flying Eagle and Indian Cent Collector's Society. The club specializes in coins that are affiliated with James Longacre, former Chief Engraver of the United States Mint, but focuses on Flying Eagle and Indian Head cent varieties. When you get a chance, please congratulate Dave and visit the club's web site atThe Fly-In Club

Best Regards,

Ralph J. Huntzinger
WINS President