3-Piece Bonded Cent Mint Error
Philadelphia Mint, PA
1990.
The United States Mint in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is responsible for producing the majority of coinage used in America’s daily commerce. The most numerous denomination is the one-cent piece, of which billions are struck every year. High-speed machinery at the mint strike the coin’s design into copper-plated aluminum blanks. This occurs once every twelfth of a second, 720 per minute. Occasionally, problems in the minting process are bound to occur.
Along the path, vibrating sifters separate misshapen coins from correctly-formed ones. Then, sharp-eyed inspectors remove any mint errors that are missed, and toss them into a special bin. These rejects are then melted down to be remade into new blanks for coins. Sometimes, a few escape this tight scrutiny and are discovered at money-counting facilities like banks and coin counting services, as well as in everyday commerce by observant customers. These oddities are then added to the available supply of mint error coins that have fascinated collectors for over two-hundred years.
The specimen acquired by the museum has an interesting history that involves a small selection of dramatic errors, a dishonest mint official, and a federal prison cell.
Malfunction of the coin presses resulted in a struck coin remaining under the dies. Another blank was fed into the collar and struck, compressing it onto the other. The same thing repeated, which resulted in a three-piece ‘bonded’ set. Several of this same multiple-coin error were collected from the presses.
Normally, these would have been disposed of. However, a mint official accumulated a grouping of these and smuggled them out of the mint. From there, they entered the marketplace to awaiting collectors.
The United States Secret Service and Department of the Treasury discovered this illegal breach and traced the incident back to the mint official. He was subsequently arrested, tried and imprisoned.
According to error coin retailing sources, the Secret Service issued a statement in the 1990s that bonded errors of three coins or less were legal to own, but those of more than three coins were to be confiscated.
The museum’s example is a three-piece bonded set, acquired from a well-known error coin dealer in the early-2000s. It was subsequently sold at auction.