I was photographing these for ebay today and I ran across this coin. It has been cleaned... but this coin was ugly even brand new... look at all those flow lines!!
Interesting. Were dies still produced by the Philidephia mint at this time and shipped out, maybe the branch mint was running low on dies.
They are not really flow lines, they are (metal flow) wear lines. It's often a very confusing issue for people because they do not realize there is a difference between the two. You see flow lines occur on the coin only and are found on every coin. Flow lines are caused by the metal flowing when the planchet is struck. On a new die or a die that is still in the early stages of its life - there are no metal flow wear lines on the die and therefore none on the coins either. However, as a die becomes worn the metal from the planchets continually flowing across the face of the die creates shallow wear lines in the die. With time those wear lines get worse and deeper. And once they are on the die, they are of course transferred onto the coin - like the one you pictured. I know it is a common practice to call them flow lines, but the fact of the matter is that is not what they are. They are wear lines.
