This is a 1978 cent overstruck on the reverse from the Ocean County Coin Club in NJ. However, the obverse looks like it was double struck prior to the reverse overstrike. The date and the "liberty" are clearly shown twice, and are not incuse, so it is not a vice job. Am I seeing things or was this truly double struck? The following pictures show the reverse with different lighting angles.
Interesting, are you talking about the Liberty seen in the jacket? Maybe the second liberty at 45 degrees is a result of a soft die, and Lincoln/details were transferred to the die details.
Also, above Lincoln's nose is the date. Please explain a soft die to me. I have not heard that term before.
A soft die would be steel that wasn't hardened correctly. In laymans terms the details on coin dies are put into the working die while the metal is soft, then it gets hardened so that it can withstand the repeated striking of planchets. A soft die striking an already detailed host coin, will begin to take on the host coins details.
Your coin has been imprinted from an soft anvil die that was used while the coin was restruck for the coin club. Really interesting looking piece.
I would love to find out if these club tokens were all struck on a roll of cents that all had this same anomaly. I am off to the hunt!
So let me get this straight. At least the obverse die was "soft" when a cent was initially struck, then it got caught in the striking chamber, rotated about 45 degrees and was struck again leaving the second-strike impressions on the working die. Or perhaps an already struck cent made its way into the striking chamber causing an impression in the "soft" working die. Are these the possibilities you are suggesting?
Not done at the mint, when the coin was restruck for the Coin Club the obverse had to be on some type of die surface to absorb the impact, that is where the soft die come into play. The coins/cent had different rotations when placed into the coin club restrike machine. I am quite sure a normal mint cent was used to make the coin club token.
As Alurid already said. Everything that you are seeing is after the coin left the mint. I hope you find some other tokens like this from the CC. That we can compare.
