ok, hear me out...

found this very nice penny that looks uncirculated. However there are some marks on that people have said in the past are tin snip marks. ok.. However this has similar marks but only on the obverse. They are punched into the penny and not leaving any type of tooling marks. No damage anywhere else on it. They are about .5 mm at their widest part. The punch is completely flat and the letter it effects only slightly warps them. Any tool or hammering it would do a lot more damage.
So her is my thought... At any point after the coin is struck with the dies, could the coin get struck by another penny multiple times creating these marks? a penny edge fits perfectly.

Thoughts?

 

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You can guess what happened all you want. However.. that's Post mint alteration.

Not an error.

 

PMD

 

Post Mint Damage. This did Not happen at the Mint.

 

What they said - PMD

 

I guess I’ll pile one, damaged.
You can see the metal that was pushed away and over the edge of the rim.

 

Yep, displaced metal is always a sign of PMD.

 

The first thing I saw on your photos was displaced metal. That makes it damaged. To me, it doesn’t matter how or where on the coin it is, it’s damage.

 

You are trying too hard to mentally make errors where there are none.
My advice is to become extremely familiar with the minting process and then always ask yourself how your coin could have had that happen at the mint.
Displaced metal, as @Collecting Nut stated, is a give away to PMD, and even if it were another coin striking the coin during the minting process, it is not an error. That happens all of the time with so many coins falling on each other.

 

It isn't that I am attempting to make a error out of nothing, I just don't believe the theory that someone purposely damaged these coins. Here are 2 pennies with the exact same marks almost in the exact same pattern on coins that are 56 years apart. So even though it is PMD, it is safe to assume they must have met the same fate 56 years later. The only other example I have found online also has the exact same markings.

 

Ouch. Someone really did a number on that one. But they did it after it left the mint.

 

So it's a 56 year conspiracy, you should post that in the exonumia forum.

 

Let me simplify this for you. There's nothing at the Mint that could have caused that. That's post-mint damage. And we're coin collectors, we're not forensic examiners. To mean, we can't tell you how it happened, exactly, just that it did.

 

I guess that is my problem. I spent the last 20 years on law enforcement and did investigations daily. So for me, if I see something at doesn't add up, I investigate. I'm sure I will be in my garage later hitting pennies to try and match the damage.

 

Sometimes we give it a guess, we can't resist it. Important thing to draw is we know the minting process inside out and upside down and as such can tell you to a high degree of certainty whether or not it's a Mint defect.

 

Most of these are done with lopper cutters for stems, they are very narrow at the tip and thicker near the handle. There are various angles and how depth can make the
larger outer depression. Why do people do this? To sell on ebay or etsy as a mint error , and as several people have said , no mint operation can come close to do
this on its own, it requires people. Good luck, Jim

 

Investigator vs post mint damage

Apples and oranges

 

Always use the correct tool for the job.
For Incomplete (clipped) Planchets I use:

Just kidding

 

Nooooooooooooo!

You silly. Planchets aren't clipped. They are incomplete. You're going to confuse the newbies!

 

These people know the total minting process so I believe everything say they give examples and explanations whenever I have needed help. I also can see people doing things to the coins to sell on Ebay. Do not believe anything you see on Ebay unless you check here first. Thank you for the information and help you give us.