Well, its official we at the Asylum have finally gone off the deep end. We are now confusing breakfast food for coins! No wait, there are waffle coins? But, you can’t eat them - can you?. Of course not, but you can collect them. Cool, count us in we are weird – ah I mean we like weird.

The US Mint is always looking for cost savings and better ways of doing the many things involved in the manufacturer of our coinage. And as us error collectors know, they are known to make a mistake or two along the way. While thankfully some of these slip out to help feed our hunger for these little misfits most do not. So exactly what does the Mint do with the ones they catch? Have you ever thought about that? Well, they must destroy them somehow. Before 2003 this meant transporting them offsite to be melted and subsequently the metal recycled. Since these coins remained legal coinage this meant significant security costs associated with these moves. But in 2003 the Mint installed new machinery to cancel these substandard blanks and errors. The machine squeezes the condemned coins between to waffled rollers under extreme pressure causing them to be smashed, stretched and distorted all resulting in their cancellation as legal tender. The result was just scrap metal and could be sold that way to recyclers and hauled away much like the dumpsters full of trash generated by the business of making coins.

Well, when first introduced the collecting community was all excited about the whole affair. Initially there was great interest and great sums of money was changing hands for these waffles. NGC had a coming-out party for a “new kind of state quarter” featuring the statehood quarter of Missouri at the 2005 ANA National Money Show in Kansas City, Missouri. Soon, NGC, PCGS, Global all got into the game of slabbing a horde quarters of 2003 as well as other denominations and these were then heavily marketed. But like tulip bulbs and other items of speculation before them they soon ran headlong into reality. Prices plummeted.

Like most things, here at the Asylum were late to the game and as usual one thing just lead to another. Actually the first waffle in the collection came as just extra stuff in a large assorted lot won for one specific coin in it. Hey, I admit, I like cool and interesting things and as I looked at that first golden dollar waffled blank I thought. Hell, that always gets me in trouble! I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to put a type set of blanks together? Well, I thought some more (more trouble) why not a struck type set? Then as if possessed I thought some more (even more trouble) why not the statehood quarters? Still not through thinking I dug a little deeper in both thought and trouble and thought how about some Presidential Dollars? At this point I finally got tired and mercifully thought I had thought enough for one day.

Here’s hoping you enjoy the fruits of my thought. Let’s start with the type set of blanks.

Like I said before, I thought if blanks were cool how cool would it be if you could make out some of the detail on the coin. Thus a type set of struck coins was formed. There were even slabbed Susan B. Anthony dollars available on eBay. This was initially baffling as they were struck way before the Mint ever thought about cancelling coins in this manner. As I researched I learned the Mint much like the Federal Reserve among its duties is the destruction of returned damaged and unneeded coinage. I even found an article that talked about a waffled Bicentennial Eisenhower Dollar! I would like to have that one but I don’t think I would want to pay the price. Anyway apparently a fair number of SBAs have found their way in to the waffle collecting community.

Why not add the 2003 and up statehood quarters to the collection? I wish I had had a good answer for that one but I didn’t so here we go. As alluded to earlier the 2003 statehood quarters were slabbed and then heavily promoted often sold in sets of the five from 2003. But have you noticed the error? They have slabbed the 2002 Indiana as a 2003 coin and the 2003 Arkansas is not included. My Red Book tells me that the Indiana wasn’t even the last coin of 2002. But hey in marketing apparently we can’t let a little thing like the truth interfere. Also, for sake of disclosure, the Indiana was slabbed with the obverse (Washington) side on the label side. I took the liberty to photo edit the image to correct this. You might see the evidence of this if you click on and view the enlarged image.

There are many holes in my collection here but that does not mean the coins are not known. In many cases I either missed a lot closing, was outbid by someone crazier than me or just refused to pay an exorbitant price for coins in this fun budget minded collection. To indicate the ones I let get away the “Wanted” place holders have a green arrow in the lower right hand corner.

Temptation, temptation oh temptation I am so weak. The opportunity arose to purchase complete four coin waffled year sets of the 2007 and 2008 Presidential Dollars and I couldn’t resist. But alas there is hope I was also offered a set of 2010 dollars but at $100 a coin I easily relocated my willpower. So here at least are 2007 and 2008’s for your enjoyment.

I find this little collection both interesting and fun. The coins themselves if you can still call them coins as some argue you can’t are not expensive. The collector base is shrinking part because a steady supply of material is not available and most error dealers scoff at these battered and beaten coins. I think that could be the formula for future rarity – no one saved them when they could. Ok add hallucinations to my list of symptoms keeping me here in the Asylum.

Hopefully you found these interesting – I have duplicates – want to trade?