I'm curious. Is anyone commenting on these two TPGS certified coins w/clip an error expert or error collector? I'm not; yet we all know there are fake coins in counterfeit slabs. Both both of these look OK to me. To the best of my memory, the only genuine large clips I have seen do not have a smooth curve as one member here pointed out might indicate the clip is a fake made with a punch.
One factor in my thinking is the geographical variation of striking pressure on individual coins. It stands to reason that areas becoming fields will be under different levels of pressure, and individual molecules will move a lesser distance during the strike, than areas becoming devices. On the other hand, that extra metal needed to fill the void of the device has to come from somewhere. It doesn't bother me for a clipped coin to lose that "perfect" radius during the strike, or even for two coins with identical clips to strike up differently. I've often wished we could go back in time and "tag" certain molecules in a given planchet to see what sort of migration occurred during the moment of strike.
I'm no error expert by any means Dave and I have been corrected for the true experts on many occasions but, IIRC, a lot of the distortion of the clipped area IAnd I do believe that the clip is valid) is primarily due to the size of both the planchet and the actual clipped area coupled with the amount of force required to actually mint the piece. Maybe Fred Weinberg can offer an opinion or perhaps Mike Diamond will wander by.
OK. It would be nice if he were to help out on error issues here on CoinTalk. Fred and I.. My favorite picture!
A constant-radius curvature on a clip would be suspicious to me. I've personally struck all sorts of things, and I can say from experience that the changing radius of the clip curvature as seen on the coins in this thread is consistent with my experience. Where the coin relief is highest is where the least amount of metal movement occurs. The fields of a coin are where the most metal movement occurs. This can cause a smooth (constant radius) clip to become far from smooth after the strike. The "Blakesley Effect" is more prevalent on larger coins where there the planchet rim upsetting is greater. And note that severely damaged blanks like the coin shown at the beginning of this thread can sometimes fail to pass through some steps in the minting process. In some cases where a clip is fairly large, even if it did pass through the upset mill, there would be no effect on it. And if the rims were not up-set on the planchet, there would not be much of a Blakesley Effect. Coins with smaller clips are the ones that tend to show the Blakesley Effect because those do get raised rims from the upset mill, for the most part. I would have to see the coin in hand, but I would presume the error shown at the beginning of this thread is genuine.
