The Future of Error Coins – A Conversation at the U.S. Mint Booth

Toward the end of my day at the 2025 American Numismatic Association (ANA) World’s Fair of Money (WFOM), I stopped by the U.S. Mint booth to check out their display, and that’s when I first saw it: the brand-new laser-engraved American Silver Eagle. The detail was crisp, almost surgical, with every feather and fold of the design cut into the metal with uncanny precision.

I ended up chatting with a couple of U.S. Mint staff members, and what they told me there that day left me thinking for days after I walked away. The Silver Eagle was just the beginning. Over the next five or 10 years, every coin minted in the U.S. will be laser engraved. Not only does this mean sharper, more detailed coins, but what the staff went on to explain was that this process is cheaper, faster, and easier to produce in the long run. Efficiency and perfection… That’s the goal.

Here’s the kicker: with this level of accuracy, the kind of mint errors we know and love could soon go the way of the dinosaur. No more doubled dies slipping through the cracks. No more wrong planchets sneaking into the presses, no more overdates to puzzle over 80 years later. In the Mint’s drive for efficiency, they may also be engineering out the very accidents that created some of the most fascinating chapters in numismatic history.

I stood there for a moment, mulling it over. For collectors, errors aren’t just curiosities. They’re stories. They’re reminders that behind every coin are human hands, machines, and the possibility of imperfection. If laser engraving truly makes those mistakes impossible, we may be living through the final era of the “classic” mint error.

Maybe that’s why coming face to face with error coins in person at WFOM felt even more special than usual. It wasn’t just about holding history; it was about realizing we’re watching a turning point in numismatics unfold before our eyes. The age of error coins, the slips and quirks that built so many of our collections, may be coming to a close. Someday soon, moments like these might only exist in our albums, our cases, and our memories. And if that’s the future? Then the thrill of the hunt today feels all the more important.