1964 Kennedy half dollar. Help with marks. What are they?

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Someone carved up the surface in the shape of an "X."

 

X marks the spot. That's where the buried treasure is.

Are those raised marks? If they are, I've not seen anything like them. I can't tell, but they look raised in those pics. If they are raised, can we see the whole coin, so as to see where they are?

 

Very often the "knife-mark" is cut in at an angle so the marks look raised to the casual collector. Then the piece is "offered" as: struck by a "cancelled" die.

 

Exactly where on a Kennedy Half would that be???

 

The alteration/damage is on the reverse of the OP's 50c. Most "canceled die" fakes I have seen are on Large cent and Morgan dollars and the "X" pattern is larger and covers much of the obverse.

 

Lol .........

 

I would like to heat that up and apply it to a few .... .

 

Yes they are raised. I guess you can say we already found the treasurer. I found this coin 20 years ago under a pine flooring plank we pulled up during our remodel. Along with this was $5.00 in mercury dimes, an 1883, 1921, 22, 23 26 Peace dollars. 8 rolls of hwheat pennies (which 2 rolls we haven't taken off the wrappers). Numerous franklin half dollars a nickel with a "v" on the reverse, silver quarters, silver certificate bills, who owned the house before us was a bank teller. The marks are on the obverse are on each side under the wing and the obverse mark is behind Kennedy's neck
These are not the greatest images but it will give you a general idea of where the marks are

 

Struck by a "cancelled" die was my initial reaction, as I've seen those cancellation marks, on a Morgan, as Insider mentions (not 'in-hand', naturally, but through images shown on the various other coin forums I frequent). The marks on the OP's coin are obviously much too small for any kind of cancellation, as they don't obliterate any part of the coin (they barely touch any of the devices), they're just kinda 'floating' around in the fields. They are most certainly PMD.

 

If the OP looks closely, he'll see the deep cuts into the coin that displaced the surface so it APPEARS to be a raised mark.

 

@Koinman .. your avatar is a bit disturbing

 

I must be getting old as it's very sick !

 

PMD , as any cancellation mark would cover the whole coin .

 

Actually, NOT always. I'll bet there are images all over the Internet to prove my post.

 

Then my Bad , but I'd say the majority of the X cancellations pretty much cover the whole coin , correct me if I'm wrong .

 

Cannot say. I just looked for myself to see. Plenty of both but I too would guess the majority should go all the way across. Maybe 70%?

 

The whole point of a cancellation is to create a die which cannot be used in commerce again, so even the ones which haven't covered the complete diameter of the die are plainly what they are. There are cancelled dies out in the wild for collectors (quite a few from Carson City Morgans, actually), and all are unequivocal.

Either way, not relevant to the coin presented here, which is just a few knife cuts.

 

Furthermore, even GENUINE cancelled dies HAVE BEEN USED in the past to strike FAKE MINT ERROR coins.

Either way, not relevant to the coin presented here, which is just a few knife cuts.

 

I got a trophy for it! lol If it's TOO disturbing, I could change it...lol