More 2015-P Nebraska doubled dies reported

In the May 12 issue of Numismatic News, I revealed the discovery of a 2015-P Nebraska “Homestead” America the Beautiful quarter with a strong doubled die reverse. It was first reported by Steve Atwood of Florida on the Coin Community Family Forum.

The coin shows a strong “extra” water pump handle duplicated in the second widow from the bottom right of the historic Freeman schoolhouse and is listed by John Wexler as WDDR-004.

In the intervening weeks, searchers have been on a treasure hunt looking for this variety and others similar, often offering them on eBay or private sale.

eBay offerings for WDDR-004 have been all across the board with sales in the past two weeks ranging from a low of $11.50 on May 17 to a high of $109.50 on May 10. In between, it’s not unusual to see them selling for in the $20-$40 range. It should be noted that coins selling for the lowest prices were often those described and/or photographed to least advantage.

Searchers have uncovered 13 new NE varieties since my last report. All are more minor than Wexler’s WDDR-004 showing a significantly smaller spread on the water pump handle and/or doubling of the window frames and/or sills. Still, some of these are rather decent minors. They’ve been fetching anywhere from about $1 to $15 a coin. Collectors are actively buying all of the varieties, in particular the two I showed in NN.

The best variety discovered since my last report is listed by John Wexler as WDDR-008 submitted by Bryant Allard. It shows vestiges of a secondary water pump handle encroaching into the two windows above as shown here.

Numismatic News readers that reported finding them included Simcha Kuritzky of Maryland who said, “A couple weeks ago, I read in Numismatic News about some dramatic hub doubling on the Homestead quarters. When I got home, I looked through a roll I had gotten at the Mint HQ’s change machine. I sell these at face value to coin club members and usually spend them after the next quarter comes out. Fortunately, I didn’t spend these, as I found nine WDDR-004 quarters, which I subsequently sold for an average of $100 each. Best circulation find yet!”

Daniel Kuziela of Illinois said, “After reading the article … I decided to go through the two boxes … I found some in [a Mint box] dated 02/02/2015 10:05:46. I found 23 doubled dies showing in the right window pane [of the schoolhouse], and only one in the left window pane. My intentions are to send about seven of them to PCGS and have them graded.”

All microphotographs courtesy of John Wexler. All of his listing can be seen here: http://doubleddie.com/1467540.html. Special thanks goes to the members of Coin Community Family Forum (www.coincommunity.com) for helping me ferret out pricing information.

Ken Potter is co-author of Strike It Rich With Pocket Change and has penned many feature articles for Numismatic News and for World Coin News. He can be contacted via email at kpotter256@aol.com. An educational image gallery may be viewed on his website at www.koinpro.com.