Hello. I just have a few questions. I have these two Pennies. A 1900 no H and a 1910. Both have Die Cracks. My question is are these die cracks made by the printing process and therefore a mistake or were they made by someone just trying to cut in half. And another question is if they are a mistake would the value of these coins go up? And no I am not the one who made the crack and trying to make money. Believe me it don't work :whistle: lol. So if any one could help it would be very much appreciated. If you would like to see the pictures please PM your email so that you can see the pictures. The files are to big to post on here. Sorry.
Die cracks are caused when too much stress in the die from striking the coins eventually causes the die to start developing cracks. The cracks normally develop from one stress point to another and the crack usually travels from on letter to another, or from a letter to a pointed feature on the central device. (Pointed features or corners on letters tend to be greater stress points than rounded or curved features.) Since these are cracks in the die, when the die strikes a coin metal is forced into those cracks resulting in RAISED lines on the coin. (Your comment about " were they made by someone just trying to cut in half" makes me think that tthe feature on your coin is probably cut INTO the coin.) On rare occasions a die will fail and develop a crack that runs all the way across the face of the die. his may show as a raised line running all the way across the face of the coin, or in some cases it will show as a "Shelf" effect where the die on one side of the crack is higher than on the other side of the crack. This is caused when one side of the lower die completely breacks off and shifts down but can't fall away because it is prevented from doing so by the collar that surrounds the lawer die. (If the upper die fails in this fashion the broken piece of the die normally falls out and a coins struck from that die shows the design in one area and a raised featureless blob in the area where the piece of the die is missing. This is called a "cud". I would be happy to look at your pictures and give you an opinion.
Here you go. Looks like man-made damage, not die cracks. These are problematic coins worth much less than if they weren't harmed.
