Hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like it might have been hit/damaged causing the A to spread out. It is not a mint error
If it was a Mint error, you would expect to see tens of thousands of dimes with this same anomaly. Chris
Considering they all come from the same master hub, you would expect to see ALL of the dimes, for whatever year that is, look the same way. For the most part positional variations in the lettering (up, down, spacing in relation to each other or the devices) for a given year ended around 1836. There are a few exceptions, but they tend to be because one master hub was used for business strike dies, and a second, slightly different, master hub was used for proof coinage dies. Or in the case of the 1992 CAM cents because a die intended for use in 1993 was accidentally used before the end of 1992.
