To most people, that Wisconsin quarter jingling in our pockets or purses is worth exactly 25 cents.
But to coin collectors, it could be worth $500 or so if there is an extra leaf - or a flaw that looks like a leaf - on the cornstalk pictured on the tail side of the quarter.
The discovery has the coin-collecting world flipping. Rare variations can drive up the price that a coin fetches in the collectors market.
"People go absolutely bonkers over some of these," said Rollie Finner of Iola, Wis., a coin collector and editor of The Centinel, the quarterly journal of the Central States Numismatic Society.
The extra markings on the cornstalk - there actually are two types - were noticed in Tucson, Ariz., in December. So far, coins that bear it have been found mostly in that area. A few also have been reported around San Antonio, Texas.
No one is sure whether the markings, one of which looks like a leaf curved down and the other a leaf pointing up, were put on intentionally during a phase of production last fall or if a gouge or foreign object in the die caused the variation. The leaf-like markings appear only on coins minted in Denver, and they might have occurred after one of multiple die changes that take place as coins are being struck.
At the moment, the U.S. Mint, which created 453 million Wisconsin quarters between October and December, says it doesn't know how the markings got there and is investigating.
"Throughout history, there have been some instances of variations - very, very rare instances," said U.S. Mint spokesman Mike White. "If there is any kind of situation like this, we just take a very close look at the process and all the different steps."
Rob Weiss, a Tucson coin dealer who began hunting for all the Wisconsin quarters he could find after a customer brought the variation to his attention, said he doesn't think the markings are there by accident - although he doubts high-up officials at the U.S. Mint would have approved them.
"It's definitely done intentionally. It's very plain that these are engraved leaves from dies with extra leaves on them," said Weiss, who owns Old Pueblo Coin.
Weiss said when he and others at the shop saw the coins for the first time, "We couldn't believe what we were seeing."
Weiss quickly went through his initial inventory of about 100 rolls of quarters and found about 5% of them with the two leaf-like markings. He reported the findings to Coin World, a 100,000-circulation weekly publication. When the magazine ran a story on its cover about the find in its Jan. 10 edition and the news subsequently was reported by local media, it touched off a Wisconsin quarter hunt in the Tucson area, Weiss said.
"At that point, everybody in Tucson was looking for the quarter," Weiss said. "It was a frenzy."
The fact that the quarters have been found only in the Tucson and San Antonio areas may mean relatively small quantities of the special coins got shipped in a few bags only to the Southwest U.S. when they came out of the Denver mint, Finner said.
Rick Snow, who owns Eagle Eye Rare Coins Inc. in Tucson, said he started paying $50 each for the quarters when he learned of them.
"As soon as word got out about that, the prices escalated," Snow said.
On Monday, he was selling a set of three Wisconsin quarters - the normal one, one with the leaf marking pointed up and one with the marking pointed down - for as much as $1,099. Individual coins with the markings were selling for $500 to $600, depending on condition, he said.
They also are showing up for sale on eBay.
The market for the special Wisconsin quarters is large - especially since none of the previous 29 state quarters were found to have any quirks or variations.
"It has a lot of collectors very excited," said Coin World staff writer Eric von Klinger, who said some collectors argue the extra markings "are nothing more than die gouges that coincidentally occurred in about the same area of the coin."
David Derzon, a coin dealer who owns David Derzon Co. Inc. in West Allis, said he hasn't seen the marked Wisconsin quarters here yet.
Finner, the Iola collector, is among those who thinks the markings are intentional.
"I can't imagine that this was purely an accident. The supposed extra leaves are too plain, too definite. It was as though they were planned to be there," Finner said.
Snow said the markings look like part of the cornstalk to him, but he's not sure why they're there. "Maybe it was someone fooling around at the mint on a low level scale, or it could be something got caught between the die and the hub," he said.
Either way, Snow predicted, the producers of coin-collecting books eventually will make a slot for the rare Wisconsin quarter.
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