I was searching through a few rolls of Memorial cents and came across this one. The date seems to be either 1998 or 1999 (not a wide AM) but who knows. Given that the motto and the bottom of the bust are sharp and clear, it doesn't seem to be an overall week strike. I would think that an overpolished die would affect more than the LI in LIBERTY and the last digits of the date. Also, I wouldn't expect to see a filled die affecting two areas on the same coin. Normal wear and tear wouldn't produce this effect either. So what did?
grease filled die. When they grease the die, they cannot determine just where the grease winds up. It looks a lot like this one. It is just the "D" and "LI"
So grease seems to be the consensus so far. To educate me, explain how only part of the second nine in the date would be affected. If there were grease in that digit in the die, wouldn't the many tons of striking pressure force the grease into the entire digit and affect the whole digit uniformly?
This is a zinc cent with a very, very, very thin layer of copper. If you ground anything off you would be through the copper and into the zinc (which would be readily apparent).
