The correct Wisconsin quarter, bottom, has a few misprints lurking in spare change. Look closely, and you'll find a corn stalk leaf hanging lower in the top and middle photos.
Posted on 02/19/2005 8:44:33 AM PST by bayourod
The correct Wisconsin quarter, bottom, has a few misprints lurking in spare change. Look closely, and you'll find a corn stalk leaf hanging lower in the top and middle photos. Like bird watchers responding to the clarion call of a rare species, coin collectors are on the lookout for an unusual find.
Two misprints of the Wisconsin quarter have stirred up the coin-collecting community.
The first Houston sighting of the unusual coins was reported late Friday morning when Margaret Whalin took one of each specimen to U.S. Coins & Jewelry.
Manager Peter Castro bought Whalin's two quarters for $125 each, far above the prices he was offering earlier this month when the coins were discovered. A San Antonio coin dealer reported purchasing several of them last week.
After waiting impatiently to get his hands on the quarters, he said, "I decided to up the ante."
The Wisconsin quarters feature a cow, a piece of cheese and a stalk of corn.
The faulty ones, from the U.S. Mint in Denver, have an extra leaf on the partially peeled ear of corn. In one print, the extra leaf is higher than in the other.
Whalin, who works at Brookshire Brothers grocery store in Bellville, started searching the store's rolls of quarters after seeing news reports about the misprints.
When she saw the first of the rare quarters Wednesday, with the higher extra leaf, "I just thought it was a scratch."
Two hours later she found a quarter with the lower extra leaf.
"Believe me, we'll continue to look," she said Friday.
Castro will keep the two quarters but plans to sell any others that come into his store. Now that he has a couple on hand, he plans to lower his offering prices to the going rate of between $50 and $75.
The error is the first known mistake in the popular series of quarters that feature each of the 50 states. Five new state quarters are unveiled in each year of the 10-year program, which started in 1999.
Coin collectors differed on whether the misprint was an accident or the work of a renegade U.S. Mint employee, and the Mint referred reporters to an official statement.
The U.S. Mint "is looking into the matter to determine possible causes in the manufacturing process," it said. "It is unknown how many of these specific quarters may have been produced. ... Quality control is a high priority for the United States Mint and will remain so."
Coin collectors said they think the hubbub will broaden the interest in coins.
"People are interested in having things that are scarce and unique," said Jim Lucas, chief operating officer of the American Numismatic Association in Colorado Springs, Colo. "That's the whole mentality of the collector."
Added Castro, "It definitely made a lot of people look through their change."
The correct Wisconsin quarter, bottom, has a few misprints lurking in spare change. Look closely, and you'll find a corn stalk leaf hanging lower in the top and middle photos.
Well they all look alike to me.
ping
I haven't even seen one of these yet. The new quarters seem to show up in California later than they do everywhere else.
I thought I'd help FReepers get a jump on the rest of America in looking for these coins since this isn't an AP article.
Is it known which variant of the misprint is the more rare?
BTW the Massachusetts quater has a Minuteman with *horrors* a rifle :)
As Will would say ...
"Much Ado about Nothing"
FORWARD is the state motto.
Here is what you are looking for:
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/pdf/2005/Wisquarter.pdf
As a kid, I used to go thru our family's spare change, looking for those coins publicized as "Rare quarter brings $100,000", etc.
Rats. I just had a couple of these and gave them to the counterman as change to lighten my pocket.
For those who asked, the bottom picture shows the correct quarter.
You can see an extra leaf on the left side below the others in the middle picture. And I think there's a vague leaf or line across the bottom arc of the leaf on the left in the top picture, which isn't in the bottom picture. That's a bit hard to tell from these reproductions.
Steven Spielburg is going to re-issue those coins and instead of a rifle, he'll be holding a walki talki.
Thanks. now I seee it.
I saw the more obvious one right away. I had to search for a better pic to see the one with the tiny leaf next to the ear of corn.
Thanks for beaming us up. Wish there were as many strong conservative Republicans as there are Wisconsin rare coins!
1996 quarters are worth $499.00
All 1966 quarters?
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