[The following excerpt is published courtesy of DLRC Press and its author, Bruce Fox. This information was originally published in 1993 in The Complete Guide to Walking Liberty Half Dollars]

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Error coins are of great interest to many numismatists as well as layman.  The fact something unusual or out of the ordinary is seen perks the interest in everyone.  “Errors,” as the name implies, are produced by mistake.  If the mistake is made in the die it will be replicated in many coins and result in a “variety.”  Some varieties are intentionally created—as in basic design changes or reworking of the master hubs.

Planchet error can be broken down to damaged planchets, clipped planchets, split planchets, wrong planchets, extra metal, sintered planchet, and unstruck planchets.  The error photographs in this section from the Fred Weinberg collection are particularly interesting.  Pictured below is a Walking Liberty half dollar struck on a quarter planchet. This error is characterized as a “wrong planchet” error because the correct metal is used, but the planchet is the wrong size. The resulting coin is larger than a quarter because the quarter planchet spread out when struck with the half dollar dies.  The difference is approximately 21/2 millimeters in diameter.

Engraving errors are more of a general, independent category.  They can include errors made on the original planchet model or any of the hub and die production stages.  Most of this category, including overdates, repunched dates, small and large dates, missing designer’s initial’s, recutting, etc., though technically “errors,” are more commonly classified as varieties.

Striking errors can be broken down to die adjustment anomalies, brockage strikes (a struck coin is lodged between the planchet and one of the dies), strikes through a foreign object, wrong metal/series strikes, rotated/misaligned strikes, strikes on clipped planchets, etc.  Pictured below from Weinberg’s collection are examples of a wrong metal strike, a misaligned strike and a clipped planchet strike.  All are rare.  The Walking Liberty half dollar struck on a steel cent planchet is extremely rare and is the finest known.  Unlike the half dollar struck on a quarter planchet described above, this half dollar error is nearly the same size as the cent because the cent planchet being steel does not spread out like the softer sfiver/copper planchet.

Errors and varieties are both relatively uncommon in the Walking Liberty half dollar series.