Stuttering Pennies

Last winter the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia turned out between 20,000 and 100,000 pennies that were lucratively flawed. As Mint officials now reconstruct the error, workmen on two shifts had improperly cast a die, and the pennies came out with a shadowy double impression of the words In God We Trust and Liberty, a sort of minute stuttering effect.

The mistake, the first such defect in U.S. coinage in 17 years, is the sort of accident that numismatists love. The Mint in fact knew nothing of the bad pennies until two of them were sent in by collectors asking if they were valid coins. Now some collectors have placed ads in Coin World offering $95-$125 for one of the pennies.

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