Any idea what this might have been used for?

Hello All. Meow is still on hunt and found this today. Meow has not seen anything like it. It really looks like it has/had a purpose. The grind marks on it also do not look like random PMD. It looks mostly to flatten the coin again after being punched and looks like it was part of the process for whatever it was created in the first place. Any ideas Members. Purrs.

 

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Nope, not a one. Stupidity maybe? Now it's just PMD.

 

Hard to tell but it might have been used as a game piece to identify a player or to indicate a value. I don't think it was just a "don't have anything better to do" stamp. It had a purpose to it. Sorry, Meow, that's all I can come up with.

Bruce

 

Meow felt it was done a bit too well for just fun too.

 

I agree that a game token of some sort is likely.

I do also see a bunch of random PMD that are most likely students in machine shop practicing. You don't get much cheaper metal to practice on than a cent.

 

Not really. The digits are slanted. Bad job using the counterstamps

Here are two coins that I marked with a counterstamp.
My uncle who lives in Puerto Rico has a counterstamp set so when I went to visit on two different occasions, I did P and R on both.

So, the point I am making is only the person who did the 35 on your coin would know why it was done and used for. I could be for many reasons.

I can tell you because I did my coins..
The P and R for Puerto Rico and
The P and R for our family surnames - Padilla & Rodriguez

 

Oh well, Meow thought that it might be coin made for a specific purpose. Guess it is just PMD....Mew.

 

Here is another example. I totally know why these were done this way!

Every year I attend a metal detecting event down in Rock Hill South Carolina. One of the events is a seeded silver coin hunt where you can detect and keep all the silver coins we can find.

In the mix are clad Dimes which they counterstamp before the event and are also seeded. When you turn them in at the event prize table you are awarded with a prize that corresponds to the counterstamped dime.

Here are the 3 that I found and turned in..



And yes, they are all considered Post Mint Damage! Even the ones I made.

 

Back in my school shop days we called these a tool chet. If you needed to borrow a tool from the tool room, you left one of your chets with the tool master for each tool you took. At the end of the class the master knew if you gave back all the tools you borrowed. It put a stop to tools walking away. I had one teacher that called them markers.

 

It's always fun trying to figure out how/why someone intentionally altered coins like this. I would agree with @BRandM and @physics-fan3.14 that it might have been a game token of some sort. I put them into excel and adjusted to see how things line up.

There appears to be about an 8° rotation on the reverse, and the damage on the obverse aligns pretty well with the 3 & 5. It would appear that when struck the coin was on a hard corrugated surface. The strikes are clear and fairly well aligned and the corrugation lines up pretty well.



Not sure what the other strike or strikes were on the obverse rim at Lincoln's bust; it almost looks like it was two strikes as the corrugation is not perfectly straight. Hard to tell from the photo of the obverse what was struck there, just two damage lines show, wonder what they were trying to do.



Very cool MTK - I would put it in a flip or an album and keep for posterity!

 

Wow those are neat! And made for a purpose.

 

Meow was pretty sure those grind marks were not just random. They actually look pretty neat and make a nice pattern.

 

I'm with @ksmooter61 - I don't think those obverse marks are from grinding; I think they're just the texture of whatever the coin was sitting on when it was counterstruck.

 

Yeah, you won't get a sharp clear strike without a hard surface. If it's too soft the punch will likely move causing multiple images (chatter). I did a lot of counterstamping years ago (see my avatar) and used a custom fixture I built to hold the coin steady. The surface was a 45 pound anvil struck with a 5 Lb sledge.

Bruce

 

That's exactly what they are. The numbers are heavily struck so it would be impossible to do that and not leave some damage on the other side. That's what you're looking at.

Bruce

 

No one thinks that this was someone’s age? And used for a gag gift?

 

Could be, but If the person was 35 in 1973 they'd be one day younger than dirt today....like me.

Bruce