Looking At Washington Dollars Edge-On

As if these new gold coins aren’t enough to make you do a double-take when the cashier hands you your change, you should be looking at the edges of the coins. Some of the interesting details might be worth money, others not, so keep your eyes open.

Most prominent in the news are an unknown number of the new dollars that were not sent through the edge-engraver, so they are missing their most distinctive feature. The new dollars are supposed to have “In God We Trust,” “E Pluribus Unum” and the year engraved in the edge of each coin, but as many as 100,000 of these flawed coins missed that step. In fact, the coin in a photo released by Professional Coin Grading Service appears to have a rough, unfinished edge, which no doubt adds to the credibility that these coins missed a quality control step that should have stopped them from reaching circulation. News reports cite early dollars selling for hundreds on eBay, then dropping to $50 or so, and the price seems to continue to slide as the dollars continue to turn up. Collectors, as always, should be diligent in ensuring they’re bidding on the real thing; sellers are offering rolls of error dollars, but the auction listing makes it clear that the rolls haven’t been opened or confirmed to actually have the error. If you’re good at math, watch the “smart as a fox” auctions with a starting price of $18.50…when there’s $25 in a roll. You might still make a profit.

eBay also has quite a few listings for ‘upside down error’ Washington coins. While it seems like as likely as an unengraved coin, collectors should go look through a $25 roll of dollars from their bank before investing a dime in online auctions. The minting process doesn’t verify coin direction prior to edge engraving, so there’s an approximately 50/50 chance the engraving appears either direction. As such, this makes for a variant of the coin pressing, not an error. This does create four variants for collectors to grab: one of each direction for both the D and the P version of each coin. However, because no direction is any more rare, neither variant is any more valuable than the other.