Mike Byers, the publisher of the popular (and free) Mint Error News Magazine, has more than 30 years of experience dealing and collecting major mint error coins. Byers' company, Byers Numismatic Corp., is based in San Clemente, California, and boasts one of the most impressive stocks of major minting errors you could ever hope to see. His store is practically a museum of Spectacular Things That Can Go Wrong At The Mint!
Mike Byers' magazine, Mint Error News, is published free on the Web on a quarterly basis. The magazine, which frequently boasts well over 100 pages, is loaded with photos and facts about error coins, how they happen, and what they're worth.
Mike Byers and His Discoveries
Aside from the publication of his magazine, Byers is known in the coin collecting community for his amazing ability to ferret out major minting mistakes. Byers is credited with finding some of the most spectacular and stupendous errors known to modern coin minting, including:
- 1999 State Quarters struck on experimental coin blanks
- U.S. coins struck on feeder finger tips (which are pieces of mint machinery)
- A one-sided test-strike for the 1910 Lincoln Cent, PCGS-certified
- A unique State Quarter struck twice, with two different State's dies
- A unique set of two-tailed Euro coins, certified by ANACS
How to Meet Mike Byers
Mike Byers loves to travel to coin shows to meet and trade with collectors. He always has a spare moment for the newbie, happy to explain how a certain coin got the way it did, so if you have some weird coins in your collection that might be mint errors, Mike Byers is the person to show him to. He sets up his table at most of the major coin shows in the U.S. You can contact him through his Web site to find out where he will be soon.
