This time I have something that would have once been labelled in the error community as sintered, no not sinister despite it being a highly appropriate movie for the season, planchet it is now classified as annealed.  Yes it does look like another FIEND I presented earlier this season but the reverse does not get its copper tone, not the tanning oil, due to missing a layer of cladding but due to a chemical process.  This little guy gets his copper sheen in the annealing process where all the little planchets go to get cooked, you know Daunte's inferno, as part of the preparation process prior to striking.  Now you probably want to know how, well originally when I had it explained to me the process was known as sintered, it was copper dust held somehow is suspension then adhered to the copper nickel planchet, which can even happen to a nickel which is strangely named being mostly copper.  To explained how this occurred on a nickel planchet it was thought that either it proceeded a batch of cent planchets or were stuck with them.  The new theory and term Improperly Annealed Planchet states that the planchet possibly stayed longer than it should have in the furnace allowing the copper atoms migrate to the surface, this theory seems to make it appearance on a nickel planchet a lot easier don't you think?  It would seem this could move from theory to fact using weight, but in both cases we are probably talking the difference that would be undetectable by any scale the average numismatist would have access to.  It would be along the lines of weighing the amount of material lost on a coins surface due to toning, think I am crazy read Coin Chemistry as the author describes how to calculate that very thing.

Today I invite you to gaze upon a curiosity I mentioned while describing my last FREAK.  Up until the truncated bust of Washington arrived this member of my cast held the coveted title of being my one and only example of an off center 1968 quarter.  Still I think this ODDITY was more a product of a planchet defect than simply a blank not arriving in the coining chamber as its creator had intended.  It would seem to me if you could wind the clock back before the die came crashing down on the DEFECTIVE planchet I suspect it would have never been able to fall into the coining chamber.  It just seems that the planchet when cut from the edge of strip of coining metal it had enough excess to exceed the diameter of the slot it was intended.  Then again I could be all wrong and its IRREGULATIY is just due to how a straight clip allowed the metal to flow without being confined by the coining collar as designed.  A possible strong point in support of this latter argument is the fact the piece only weighs 4.7 grams in lieu of the 5.67 grams noted in the redbook for a standard, yes I almost wrote normal but now normal has a negative connotation go figure, copper nickel issue of this year.  So doing a quick check on the math based upon the 20% clip noted on its plastic captor the weight should be 4.536 grams, which is not that far off from its actual weight.  So I may be wrong about how my little FIEND was created or maybe I am right.  Maybe someday someone can run a computer simulation or better yet create a time machine so I may one day know for sure how my possession came to be. That said it is the mystery that makes this oddly shaped menagerie of pieces so delightfully interesting.