Two Headed/Tailed Coins

By Bill N-T

I don't visit this board that often, however, whenever I do there's always a post from an excited person thinking they've found something rare because they have a coin with two faces, two tails, mismatched heads & tails sides (say a quarter face with a nickel tail) or some other oddity. Relax - with today's methods of minting coins, that type of error would be EXTREMELY rare...you'd have a better chance of winning the powerball lottery than you would in finding a genuine coin with this type of error.

I recently saw on TV one method of making these double sided coins demonstrated. The first coin is held in a lathe and one side of the coin is carefully milled away leaving only the rim. A second coin is then put on the lathe and one side and the rim are milled away so that the diameter of the second coin matches exactly the milled out area of the first and such that the thickness of the two coins together equal the thickness of the original. The second coin is then inserted into the first to create the double sided coin. If properly done, the two pieces snap together and stay together held only by friction, there is no seam around the edge, the seam is on one side around the inside of the rim.

Before you try this at home, remember, the guy on TV was a skilled machinist who made the coins as novelty items.

So when you get a coin with two sides the same or two sides that appear to be mismatched (two different years, or two different denominations) don't go running off thinking you've found a RARE collectors item. You've probably got a novelty coin worth very little to a serious coin collector.