Double headed penny?

Jdeere562

Jdeere562

Joined
Oct 10, 2021
Messages
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Location
Iowa
Talked to my friend last night. They have a change sorter and counter at work. They were looking at the rejected change.
She found a penny with heads stamped on both sides. I believe she said it was dated 1994.

Said she could see no indications that someone sliced pennies in half and joined them back together.
What say you all? I have not seen the penny.
 
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I see they are sold on Ebay and other sites. Most likely a well done fake is my guess.
 
The machines at the mint are designed so a two-headed coin can't be made by accident. The die that stamps "heads" only fits in the top of the machine, and the one that stamps "tails" only fits in the bottom. All two-headed coins that may be found in circulation are confirmed fake.

Two-headed coins are made as novelties or props by joining parts of two genuine coins, though not by slicing exactly in half. One coin has the tails side hollowed out almost to the edge. The other coin is reduced in thickness and diameter so it fits into the hollow part of the first one, and they are forced together in a press. The tell is that there will be a ring around the edge of one of the heads.

www.thesprucecrafts.com

Are Two-Headed Coins for Real?

Learn how to tell if your two headed coin is genuine or fake. This page also explains how two-headed coins are made.
www.thesprucecrafts.com www.thesprucecrafts.com
 
mk378 said:
The machines at the mint are designed so a two-headed coin can't be made by accident. The die that stamps "heads" only fits in the top of the machine, and the one that stamps "tails" only fits in the bottom. All two-headed coins that may be found in circulation are confirmed fake.

Two-headed coins are made as novelties or props by joining parts of two genuine coins, though not by slicing exactly in half. One coin has the tails side hollowed out almost to the edge. The other coin is reduced in thickness and diameter so it fits into the hollow part of the first one, and they are forced together in a press. The tell is that there will be a ring around the edge of one of the heads.

www.thesprucecrafts.com

Are Two-Headed Coins for Real?

Learn how to tell if your two headed coin is genuine or fake. This page also explains how two-headed coins are made.
www.thesprucecrafts.com www.thesprucecrafts.com
Click to expand...
That would be my best guess. You would think both sides would be stamped in one operation.
 
Jdeere562 said:
Talked to my friend last night. They have a change sorter and counter at work. They were looking at the rejected change.
She found a penny with heads stamped on both sides. I believe she said it was dated 1994.

Said she could see no indications that someone sliced pennies in half and joined them back together.
What say you all? I have not seen the penny.
Click to expand...
Your friend is pulling your leg.
 
Oillover said:
Your friend is pulling your leg.
Click to expand...
She would not do that to me. We have been friends and worked together 10 years.
We can totally trust each other. I think they just got a fake, and that's why it was rejected by the machine.
 
Haven’t seen one in person however as a coin collector myself I’d pay to have it provided I had the extra money. Rare but they do exist. I do have an off center penny though that I obtained at a collectors show.
 
AutoMechanic said:
Haven’t seen one in person however as a coin collector myself I’d pay to have it provided I had the extra money. Rare but they do exist. I do have an off center penny though that I obtained at a collectors show.
Click to expand...
I can buy you one off the internet for $3.99. Send it to you for $200? (only so cheap because we are friends):D
 
In this day and age, it has to be fake.
As mk378 said, the stamping machines are designed to prevent errors.

But, I once had a nickel that kept being rejected at all the self-checkouts in stores.
I thought nothing of it.
One day I tossed some coins on the kitchen table and this nickel sounded different.
Upon closer examination, I squeezed it and the center flexed in.
I immediately remembered a famous case the F.B.I. had called: The Hollow Nickel Case (info on internet).
(Russian spy was smuggling micro-film out of this country in a hollow nickel)
All kinds of ideas were going thru my mind.
Ended up being a hollow nickel used by magicians.
That was the end of my espionage days.
 
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They say the mis-stamped coins are destroyed. Pretty dumb move. If collectors pay such a high price for these errors, why doesn't the mint sell them and bring in more revenue for the government?
 
atikovi said:
They say the mis-stamped coins are destroyed. Pretty dumb move. If collectors pay such a high price for these errors, why doesn't the mint sell them and bring in more revenue for the government?
Click to expand...
The reason they're valuable is because they're rare. If they were freely distributed they wouldn't be rare and in consequence wouldn't be valuable.
 
ecotourist said:
The reason they're valuable is because they're rare. If they were freely distributed they wouldn't be rare and in consequence wouldn't be valuable.
Click to expand...
I assume they don't happen too often so they wouldn't be freely distributed. People pay up for limited edition coins and stamps, so errors like these would be even more valuable.
 
The mint's error is not in mis-striking a coin, but that it was allowed to escape quality control and go out to the public. A place that doesn't care about quality could make deformed coins all day.
 
When working, I always had stereobinoculars available to be. It would be very hard to make a double-headed coin that can escape detection at up to 40X.
 
When I was a kid I got into coin collecting and would get rolls of coins from the bank, paw through them, roll 'em back up, and redeposit them. At the time my bank would let me do this for free, LOL.

I got a roll of mint fresh pennies and three of them got "stomped", a mint error that looked like a solar eclipse. IDK if the pennies get cut before they get embossed or after, but my samples indicate that they can somehow bounce around. If they can bounce sideways, maybe they can flip over? But then what are the odds it would flip over and be "perfect" and not a double exposure or offset stamping?

I had a coin value book published by some shyster in New York that bought coins. I sent them one of my three, they paid me five bucks for it. Their offer letter indicated it was a "common mint error", blah blah blah. I could have sent the check back and got my coin back but I felt so rich cashing the check! I'm confident the other two are still in my piles of cultch somewhere.
 
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