Expert: Jim Lawniczak - 10/14/2006

Question
a penny that has 199 no last number .found in new roll. does not look like it was tampered with

Answer
Hello, Don, it sounds like what happened is that either the die that was making your cent was getting worn towards the end of its life or the dies got a bit out of alignment with the dies too far apart or something (piece of lint) got in between the die and the planchet when your piece got made, so that the last digit of the year didn't quite strike up.  If you have a magnifiging glass take it and look at where the last digit of the date would be and see if you can see just a very faint impression.

I am not an expert in error coins, but they do have some value.  You may want to try going to www.ebay.com and doing a search for weak strike cent or weak strike penny or missing digit cent or missing digit penny (or the like) and see if someone is selling something like what you have.  If that doesn't work, try the same searches at www.google.com to see if you can find an error coin dealer with something like what you have in stock for sale.

Hope this helped a bit, Jim Lawniczak