Thanks a lot for your reply. I'm pretty green when it comes to coin collecting and being able to tell the difference. Do you mind telling me how you can tell the difference?? Please. Like I said I'm new at this and just trying to learn.
Yep, looks like it ran afoul of a mower or somebody took an axe to it. And that's really unfortunate because it looks like it was in above average condition before it got whacked. Semper Fidelis
This is all about knowing the minting process and what is possible. You will never know for sure what caused the damage. Too many possibilities. People to crazy things to coins.
Here's one way to look at it: First, the definition . . . Mint Error, an untoward event occurring to the planchet/coin from the time it enters the hopper until it is whipped into the bin after striking. (I'm excluding various types of damage to a blank or planchet before it ever got to the hopper; besides if the planchet had been cut like that before it was struck, it wouldn't look like that after it was struck as the compression would have flattened that cut.) So the planchet slides down the hopper and fingers slide it into position in the chamber; the collar comes up; the hammer die comes down and impresses the coin; the collar goes down, and; the extractor fingers whips it into the bin. The question now is . . . what in that process could produce that kind of damage??? Well you could have a catastrophic die failure, however that generally happens to the hammer die and the major damage is on the reverse; besides that type of die failure would mostly result in more wide spread damage. How about another planchet entering the chamber before the subject coin was eject? No go because detail on the subject coin would be flattened and the coins may be even pressed together. Maybe hung up on the Collar? No Joy there either as there would be some additional detail from a second strike (remember, that die is pounding down around 200 times per minute so the likelihood is that if it isn't ejected immediately, it's going to get struck again and the evidence, in terms of detail, will be evident. In fact, look at your coin again and you can almost immediately rule out everything above, because by all evidence, this was a well struck coin before it was ever damaged. So is there anything else possible? Well there are the extractor fingers; one of those could have broken up and cut into the coin . . . but still, the damage doesn't add up; you have the significant cut, then you have the depressions running down the middle, and toward the bottom you have additional damage which is running in a different direction. Finally, the Obverse shows very little effect other than what looks like glue in the hair and a depression on the rim that is not, position wise, correlated with the damage on the reverse. Bottom line is, using this process and given the strike quality of the coin, the most logical conclusion is that it's PMD! One additional aid is to take a look at http://www.error-ref.com , these guys have done a Yeoman's job of putting together a listing, many with pictures, just about every type of mint error you can imagine . . . spending a couple of hours looking that over will go a long way toward helping to recognize what is . . . and what isn't, a Mint Error! BTW, I've given a pretty simplistic overview of the minting process and I'm sure that they are developing different presses and processes all of the time, but I believe it pretty much covers the basic concept. Semper Fidelis
Thank you. That was a lot but really educational. Especially since I'm entry level. That was exactly what I needed to read. I appreciate your time and schooling me on Mint errors 101. Looking forward to sharing more.
Look at this website - http://www.error-ref.com Read it all and absorb the information It takes time to understand the many forms of mint errors. Oh.. I see someone already provided that link
