Welcome to the forums Jackie That's not really an error, more an example of how lax the Mint have become in standards. It's probably a die crack or something like that, and the 5p is so small that probably the inspectors failed to notice such a tiny phenomenon until a large number had been minted. If you found 3 it's unlikely to have any rarity. Thanks for bringing it to our attention though. Hi Thank you for you reply. i must agree with you. yes it looks like royal mints standards have droped. the other 2 coins are different, one is die filled. and the 3rd coin the word penny is just a mess. I thought die cracks ect were classed as errors. now im confused. jackie There's more than one way of looking at everything! To some they would be classed as errors, but among the collecting community they would be regarded more as deterioration, or degradation; dies wear, or crud gets onto a die or a blank, or dies crack. To collectors, an error is usually regarded as something that is the result of human error not simply a machine. For example, blundered dates, or an overdate / overpunched letter, spelling mistake, design flaw - that kind of thing. Thank you peckris for explaining it to me. im new to coins and learning. i was given a few old coins a while ago im only just starting to look at them. i have a few wheat cents and noticed the word liberty was all messy. this is when i started looking at error coins. since then found my self inspecting every coin on my purse lol. There is one coin i cant identifie i will post it on the forun to get some help. jackie Hi. I collect error coins like this aswell as the "normal" coins. In 20,30,70 years time they might be recorded as errors and if looked after now will be good examples in years to come.