Should I feel like an April Fool?

Here’s your test.

How would you answer an email that happened to come my way yesterday?

Take a look at the two images.

This is the text of the emailed inquiry that came with the photos:

“I found this roll searching. It is I do believe the one and only 1993 wide AM penny. Sending if off as soon as I can. Any questions feel free to email me. Thanks.”

I figured the sender wanted some sort of reply or the email would not have been written in the first place.

OK. How would you respond? Would you respond at all?

That was my thinking.

What's yours?

The clock's ticking.

Times up.

Here is the text of the email I sent back:

“Thank you for the photos. The cent is too severely damaged to have any value.”

In my morning email today, I had this reply:

“It’s actually a struck through capped die multistrike error well at least that’s what it labeled and holdered as. But thanks for taking the time to look.”

Huh?

What do you think?

I still don’t know what to make of this exchange.

Start with the obvious statements that the writer was planning to send it off to a grading service followed by the statement that implies he has already done so.

I do not know what the obverse looks like.

The cent, if it was slabbed, was removed from the holder to be photographed.

That would be somewhat odd behavior for a collector who has just had the coin identified and slabbed.

It’s not April Fool’s Day. I feel like it is.

This seems to be a good example of why dealers insist on seeing a coin before they state an opinion.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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