In 2000 the collecting world was startled to learn that the Mint had produced mules that married the obverse of a State quarter dollar with the Soaring Eagle reverse of the just-released golden Sacagawea dollar. Perhaps the entire batch was melted, aside from the present coin.” Most likely, a press run was made from this die pairing and detected by an inspector, possibly the operator of the mint press. Only the narrow difference in die diameter between the cent and dime makes it plausible that a busy mint worker could erroneously pair dies of different denominations. Heritage’s listing for the 1995 coin notes, “An astounding mint error that prior to the 1990s was believed impossible to occur. In 2010, Heritage Auctions sold a pair of cent-dime mules - a 1993-D cent obverse paired with a dime reverse on a cent planchet and a 1995 cent obverse with a dime reverse on a dime planchet.
The errors, called mules by collectors, are extraordinary scarce and sell for $50,000 and up. On rare occasions, perhaps by accident, perhaps on purpose, dies are mismatched when they’re placed in coinage presses - an obverse die for one denomination is paired with the reverse die of a different denomination.įor this to happen the coins must be similar in size, limiting the possibilities to 11-cent coins - coins from paired dime and cent dies - and $1.25 coins - coins from paired quarter dollar and dollar dies. The Mint has never purposefully struck 11-cent coins or $1.25 pieces, but they exist nonetheless and are avidly collected.