An eBay sale of a 1970 US quarter may at first glance appear routine, but a closer look reveals "one of the most fascinating and intriguing proof mint errors ever discovered"—one that's boosted the coin's auction price to $35,000.
Mike Byers, the eBay seller who's trying to dump the coin (and an expert at finding such currency flaws), reveals the backstory for this particular sample.
It turns out the 1941-turned-1970 quarter was part of a collection containing a small group of press mistakes, originally checked out and released by the Secret Service to the state of California, which then auctioned off the entire collection.
But while Country Living encourages everyone to rummage through their couch cushions and piggy banks in the hopes of finding a coin like this, Byers notes in his eBay listing that such finds are few and far between.
"Proof coins are … produced, examined, and packaged using extreme quality control. It is very unusual to find major proof errors." More typical mistakes often include off-center and double-strike samples—when a planchet (the round metal disk that's struck to become a coin) doesn't eject properly and gets struck more than once.
(Uzbekistan boasts the world's least valuable coin—worth just 1/1999th of a penny.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: 1970s Quarter Selling for Thousands on eBay