Big Print and Small Print Coins??

Super Collectors Go Looking For Reasons To Collect -- And Often They Find Them

It started with questions stemming from a sharp eye. This coin looks shiny. This coin looks dull. That coin has extra details... or else the other coin looks already worn. Sitting down with dozens of samples, our objective was to see if there were true variations in the Star Wars 30th anniversary coins. The conclusion we came to was, "yes, there are."


When looking at the coins, we considered their production properties. The coins are a relatively soft metal, struck between dies for several months. Since they're toys and not currency, we're going to go with the premise that the dies weren't designed to last forever and might show some wear (lack of detail) the further into the run they went. It's unfortunate that we worked with loose samples so we didn't have the benefit of packaging timestamps. It was rare that we found any two coins alike. The production quality seems a hairline different on every single coin. Small differences which were determined to be production quality were discarded from our hunt for variations. On the coins above (which we are NOT considering variations), the one on the left has less clear text along the bottom, which should indicate a 'lite strike' in the die, and yet unlike the coin on the right, there's specific detail in the trooper's codpiece. These two coins represent typical production differences and are essentially considered to be the same.

Here we have stormtrooper coins... The one on the right is the one that started this search. Overall, some character coins are matte or dull finish, and some are shiny finish. Stormtrooper is the only one we've encountered that had a matte coin and a shiny coin in the samples. If you're uncertain if a coin is shiny or dull, look into it. If you can see your distorted reflection, it's shiny. If all you do is cast a 'shadow', it's dull. The trooper on the right has 'goggle eyes' and much more clear detailing on his right arm. Above all else, there is one distinguishing feature that tipped this coin over into the variation column... Look at the detailing on the gun beside the trooper's left hand. Both guns have clear line-detailing end-to-end on the gun, but on the goggle-eyed trooper there's a distinct square box on the gun next to the hand. Since there is no loss of detail on the left coin and the box is not present, the coins are clearly variations of each other.

The Yavin Honor guard was our first wake-up call for the large print / small print coins. We weren't looking at the text (right away). Something just looked 'different' about these coins. Examine the placement of the guard's left arm and hand in relation the the #10 banner. The coin on the left clearly has the hand touching the banner, while on the right there's sufficient room between the hand and the banner. There's too much space for that to be the cause of a worn die expanding. It was definately a different production. We looked at the proximity of the text to the edge of the coin, and the smaller font size used for the "30th" and "#10" and became certain that the text had been reduced. Our next question was, is the smaller text unique to the Yavin Honor Guard coin, or do other coins have similar variations?

The Death Star Trooper coin clentched it for us. The 30th banner is smaller, the #13 banner is smaller, and check out the "Imperial Soldier" spacing between the coin edge and figure. So now the work will begin in ernest to try to document the production changes vs. the quality variations produced by the manufacturing process. Pull out your own collection of coins and give them a good look. If you think you have a legitimate production changed coin, scan it, or photograph it and send it in. (Start by using the "Send Email" link at the top of the web page.) We'll compare it to all the samples in our collections, and let you know what we find. Who knows? You could discover the next documented variation.