Wondered if anyone could offer an explanation for this please? I'm as sure as I can be that it's not post mint. The area has a dished appearance.
It's definitely not circulation wear. The area where his ear is, is concave. I've never seen another penny with a remotely similar wear pattern. I don't know - my scales are only accurate to 0.1g so they'll never pick up that level of discrepancy. Quite possibly - it would be the biggest effect from grease I've seen that hasn't affected letters only. My initial thoughts were an underweight planchet with insufficient metal to fill the dies (but wouldn't that just be thinner, and therefore almost unnoticeable?) or a big old glob of grease.
