OK, I have been on CT for a couple of years. I do not collect US coins or hunt for errors. A fellow collector friend in our local coin club is convinced the pictured coin is an error. I'm pretty certain it is not but also know that I am not an expert at errors. So, to my eyes, it does appear that part of liberty is visible in the area in question.
Whenever I encounter a piece like this, my first response is: explain to me what error you think might have caused this? If you can come up with a legitimate way this error may have been caused during the minting process, I'm willing to hear you out. If you have no idea how a coin is made, I probably won't spend much time listening to your theories of how road-rash is an error. Any discussion of legitimate errors has to start with understanding how coins are made and where the process can go wrong... and 89% of people who posts errors here just have no clue what they are talking about. That's what is so frustrating about this forum. They'll literally post a coin they found in a parking lot that had been run over by a truck a dozen times and wonder what error it is. Like, son, maybe if it looks like it's been run over by a truck, maybe it has been?
Ah, that's my ranting long-way-round of saying this coin has been wedged and hammered, definitely post mint damage. You'll find this sort on etsy advertised as errors asking thousands, but its not a real error.
DefDam CircCam There seems to be a bit of slang that pops up on any board. I wonder how many other slang terms we use that aren't known outside of CT. I also wonder how many in-jokes we have that we think are funny but would be met with confused stares elsewhere?
WT - Wishful Thinking WTN - Wishful Thinking Newbie Are 2 others I coined For example.. When a newbie has a copper plated cent who thinks it was struck over an old wheat cent.
I actually used it in conversation with the friend who has the quarter. It was kind of amusing to see the confusion on his face. While I don't look for errors I read enough of the threads over here and have a general understanding of the minting process that I was pretty confident that it was just damage. At least he didn't argue with my opinion. That's part of the reason I offered to share it here.
At least to the best of my knowledge. In 2005, when I joined the NGC forums, I learned that their program would censor defamatory or just plain nasty words. There were many instances where we discussed eBay buyers paying foolish money for some coins. The word "idiot" was one such word that was not acceptable. So, I started using the word "bidiot" because it was not recognized by the program.
Just to add yet another opinion . . . PMD. Plain and simple. Ask your friend if they have studied the minting process and then he would know it didn't happen at the mint.