UK 50 Pence , 1998 NHS , Amazing plate flaws

Hi all ,

I got some bags of 50 Pence's from the bank yesterday to do my usual “noodling” and came across this nice item. I'm keeping this one.

There are raised diamond shapes in front of face & behind head, longer diamonds below chin & rear angle of neck.

Behind the top of the head there is an arc with the edges slanting inwards.

On the neck there is a mirror image of 50 & below is PENCE , also some lettering around other parts below the readable words.

I have looked at all the coins that I can think of to try and find anything which is similar to the ghost impression, with no luck.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks, Merv

Hello — It's a good idea to include a link to the coin in the catalogue.

This is a quite nice die clash. You can read the word ƎƆИƎԳ (PENCE) entirely at the bottom.

EDIT — What happened is that the two dies clashed without a blank in between. So, in this case, the higher points on the reverse die directly hit the obverse die and damaged it in the process. For some reason damage of this kind is more common on the obverse, perhaps because it's the lower die.

This is different from ghosting which happens because of die overuse. The die gets damaged by heavy transfer via the blanks as they are struck. Certain types of large coins are more likely to suffer from ghosting, such as the British penny under George V.

Great find Merv! It looks in great condition like it was in a collection for some time.