Today I present a FREAK that fooled me, not that I am expert in the field of Freaks Irregulars, Defects, and Oddities, still I thought I knew a thing or two.  Failure is said to be a great teacher so why not pass along my new found knowledge to you.  I still am confident of his inclusion into my series as he is a FREAK, just not exactly the one I was looking for.  The particular oddity I thought I had so cleverly acquired via worldwide swap meet looked for all intentional purposes to be a die adjustment strike at least so I thought.  So what are the telltale signs of a die adjustment strike, generally it is weak in appearance on both sides, oops my bad coins have three sides but more on that later, as the dies stop just short of bringing up a full strike.  So with this error there is nothing wrong with either the dies nor with the planchet, this is just a case of the spacing between the two dies being too wide to exert enough force to cause the metal of the planchet to flow into all the recesses elements of the dies to impart the obverse and reverse images as intended.  BTW, text speak, this is not to be confused with a die alignment strike, which is a case where the spacing may be correct but hammer die is out of alignment with the anvil die resulting in one side of the coin being off center while the flip side is spot on.  Sorry that is not a leader for the next show as I do not have an example of that type either, so where were we?  So not to long after I received my RAW fiend in the mail I decided he could stand a trip to Florida to get hammered, I mean SLABBED.  

Hello again, I have to say selecting the freak to close with was almost harder than choosing the one to lead with.  I was lucky enough to add two more members to my cast from the most recent offering of ghouls from Heritage's special offering ERROR COINS online auction in September.  Despite picking up a really grotesque freak from Heritage I ended up choosing a monster of a double date I acquired during the most recent ANA show held in Texas.  I really did not have my eyes quite adjusted on the dealer’s inventory when I first saw this coin  in the case.  I was prepared to look at a rather unusual clipped Kennedy I had seen in the dealer’s inventory online now in person, but sadly it was eclipsed by this one that I am showing you today.  I even had to make that really hard choice of do I get them both or do I leave one behind.  My budget not being as large as the state I reside I did have to choose one so the clipped 1968 Kennedy ended up in another's collection whereas the double date Kennedy found a new home with my troop of misfits.  Of course the story is not as sad as it seems as I did leave out that I had my eye on a 1968 quarter on cent planchet in another dealer’s inventory that has a beautiful blue hue that I also took home that day.  So any remorse felt for my loss should be weighed by the fact I added two members that day too, so boo-hoo for me, NOT!

I recently took a trip to the Houston Space Center and was really looking forward to seeing a Saturn V with my own eyes.  As a youth, like most of my generation, I really wanted to be an Astronaut studying every image I could find of the lunar missions.  The video of the Saturn V with chunks of ice cascading down as it cleared the platform was always impressive.  The idea of launching what was basically a skyscraper toward the moon was unimaginable.  Almost as much unimaginable as the fact that it has been over forty-five years since anyone has set foot on the moon today.