2008 John Quincy Adams - Missing Edge Lettering, Satin Finish SP66

History

John Quincy Adams dollars were struck under the Presidential Dollar Coin Program Act, Public Law 109-145, as the sixth design in the series and the second of the four 2008 releases, following Monroe and preceding Jackson and Van Buren. Circulation strikes were released May 15, 2008, but the satin-finish coins never entered circulation. Those were struck with specially prepared dies and burnished planchets and sold only through the 2008 United States Mint Uncirculated Coin Set. The missing edge lettering exists because the inscriptions are applied in a separate third operation after striking, and coins that bypass the Schuler edge-lettering machine leave the mint with a blank edge, a phenomenon first noticed in 2007 during the program's opening year.

Details

The coin carries a satin finish rather than the normal circulation surface, and PCGS catalogs it as a Special Strike, assigning grades with the SP prefix under PCGS number 410736. Because the date and mint mark on a Presidential dollar are part of the edge inscription, an example that skipped the lettering machine carries no mint mark at all, which is why the issue is listed as "(2008)" with no facility attribution. Satin dollars were packaged in both the Philadelphia and Denver folders of the same set, so either mint is possible for a given error coin. No mintage figure exists, since this is a production error and not an authorized issue.

Features

The obverse shows a portrait of Adams with JOHN QUINCY ADAMS above and 6TH PRESIDENT 1825-1829 arched below. A properly finished Presidential dollar has the year, mint mark, E PLURIBUS UNUM and IN GOD WE TRUST incused on the edge; on this coin the entire inscription is absent and the edge is plain. Several related edge errors are recognized on the series and should be kept separate from this one, including weak edge lettering, partial edge lettering, overlapped lettering and inverted edge lettering, where a second set of inscriptions appears upside down over the first. The Position A and Position B designations apply only to normally lettered coins, so a blank-edge example has no position, and given that the error is defined entirely by an absence, certification by PCGS or NGC is effectively required for a coin to trade as genuine.

Notable facts

• The 2008 United States Mint Uncirculated Coin Set contained 28 satin-finished coins, went on sale July 30, 2008 at $22.95, and held all four Presidential dollars in each of its two folders.
• PCGS reports that satin-finish Presidential dollars are considerably scarcer with missing edge inscriptions than circulation strikes carrying the same error.
• An SP66 example brought $660 in July 2011.
• Identical coins turn up in both MS and SP holders, a holdover from earlier PCGS labeling before the issue was treated as a Special Strike.
• PCGS has graded just over 1,800 missing-edge 2007 John Adams dollars and well over 20,000 missing-edge Washington dollars, both circulation strikes.
• PCGS also recognizes a Moy Signature label variant of this coin.