The Faceless Drummer
Looking for advice from the experts here on what you would call this type of minting error and what our next steps should be to verify the authenticity and, assuming that it has value, determine what we should do with it next.
Backstory: My brother found this bicentennial quarter yesterday while going through coins left to us as part of a family estate. Our grandfather (d. 1999) left thousands of coins to our mother. Before she passed in 2024, she told me several times, “Get the coins from my closet.” They were largely unsorted in coffee cans, milk cartons and sacks. We’ve been going through them to separate pre-1965 silver and look for anything that looks interesting. This particular quarter was inside one of several rolls of only bicentennials that my grandfather likely rolled in the late 1970s.
Everything is off-center. The drummer has no features on his face. Washington’s portrait is missing detail and only the words, “GOD WE RUST” are visible. The edges are smooth like a nickel without the normal serrated grooves.