I found this while going through a box of pennies (Brinks) purchased at the local small-town bank, in hope of finding something that might have trickled down from the "Great American Coin Hunt." Whether or not I did is something I don't know. I haven't yet done much besides rough-sort them into decades, and pull out any BU and otherwise obviously interesting coins. I found what seem to be well above average BU coins, quite a few up to a half-century old, including a 1969-D which looks nicer than the two 2019-D cents from the same box (the only 2019 cents I've ever found; the 2019-P "Lowell" quarter I found while searching six rolls has squelched any real hope of finding a "W" quarter out here in the wilds of Western Michigan; at a 1:200 coin ratio, I'd need to go through 48,000 quarters to find one "W" -- and that's just not gonna happen). As to this thing... what is it? A garage-job? A Mint test strike of some kind? It appears to be done with enough care to obviate "accidental" causation. But by the same token I can't think of any reason someone would go to the effort of doing it (and, placing it just where a mintmark would have gone). I tried doing some web searching, and didn't find anything -- but that might only be due to my inability to come up with appropriate search terms for my queries. I once again apologize for the cruddy photos. I still haven't put together a rig to enable me to use my Micro Nikkor on my DSLR (but I did buy a small copy stand which I'll be modifying for such use; my (ahem) "health" has really got me off my game). I'm getting there little by little. With any luck I'll get it done before I die. The first photo was taken at an angle (looking upward), to get a better look at the depth of the "donut" and the height of the "pin" in the center. From the degree of tarnish it seems IMO to have been done either at the time of minting or not long after.
I would have to say intentionally done. I don't know of anything in the minting process that could cause that.
Easy.. The reason is because the person that did it was very bored. So they wanted to create something to confuse the finder such as yourself!
The Mint did a test in 1945. They were trying to lower costs and adding the D and S mintmark was costly. Their thoughts were if they used a dot then that would cover both mints and any future mints. Phillynof course would be unchanged having no Mint mark. This all conus with no mintmark were from Ohilly but all those with the dot (such as yours) would be another Mint. Naturally the public rejected this and so it was never put into use. The idea was shelved before the end of the year.
Two other things stand out to me: Given its age, and lack of wear, I think it's likely that it spent most of its life in a collection. And, given the current timeframe, in which "The Greatest Generation" members are dropping like flies, I think it likely that the collection fell prey to "The old man finally died, now we can finally get rid of all this change he hoarded like a fool" syndrome, which IMO is a primary fodder for the Coinstar plague. (As an aside, every time I see someone referring to coins as "change," a variety of epithets are subvocalized.) The second thing is that I think this was (horribly) cleaned at some point, and not very recently.
It obviously was in a collection most of its life. With no damage on reverse and without an in hand inspection I can not say it is not Mint Damage. The reason So Many BU cents from the 60's are popping up. I was at my coin dealer house last summer when he got the call about John. He say's to his wife "John S just passed, He just bought coins from me last month". I got a very nice CH/BU 1984 CC Morgan out of that collection.
It's not just coins. Several years ago, someone posted to the camera collector list (IDCC) about something similar -- he stopped in at the local thrift shop on a lark; he hadn't been there for a while and decided to pop it. It was having an "all you can fit in a grocery sack for $5 sale." He browsed around, and saw some photo gear sitting on a shelf. There was a box with it, full of even more stuff. By the time he left, he'd filled up $10 worth of grocery bags with classic Nikon and Leica gear -- bodies, lenses, accessories -- thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of stuff. He recognized much of it because he'd originally sold it! I'm sure the survivors -- IMO in all likelihood the widow's "adult children" -- advised her to just "get rid of that old crap" (probably reinforced with "It's not even digital! And get a load of this -- you've even got to futz around with all kinds of settings! It won't even focus itself! No one in his right mind would ever want to buy garbage like this. If you don't want to just toss it in the trash, then see if they'll let you donate it to the thrift shop.") I wince inside every time I think of how many Leica, Canon, Nikon, Voitlander, etc., etc., etc. classics are decomposing in landfills across the country. It's the prevalence of this mentality that makes me think "The Great American Coin Hunt" will be a huge flop, and that the dealers who slipstreamed all those rare/valuable coins into circulation might just as well have put them in bottles and dropped them into the middle of the ocean. By the time a scant few of them are ever found by someone who'll recognize them for what they are, they'll have been scraped, scratched, worn, and in many cases given the "ring of death" by coin roll sealing machines -- if not gouged into oblivion by bored morons. Offhand I'd guess that on average I see at least one bronze penny per roll that some @#$^#$% has spent maybe a half hour or so going at it with an awl or some other pointy object. On the ones where the date and mint mark are completely removed I always wonder if it was a '55 DDO or something of similar caliber -- and I'm sure that there ARE uber-valuable coins that have been intentionally destroyed -- just as there are pennies that people have spent decades searching for, which are now sitting in closets full of 5 gallon jugs, awaiting the day it becomes legal to melt them down (while the hoarders sit there eagerly awaiting that day, never for a moment considering that ONE penny in that hoard could easily be worth several times the entire tonnage -- and if anyone were to bring this up, the likely response would be something along the lines of, "What kind of an idiot do you take more for? I'm not gonna waste my time going through all that damn change! It's got real value -- it's copper!") Well, I've slipped into Cranky Old Man mode, so I guess I'l quit typing and see if there are any kids I can go chase off my lawn. <g>
Oh yes, every type of collection gets left behind by the owner. I think damaged coins make nice ones worth more.
Well, yeah, as long as you're the guy who has the nice ones and not the cruddy ones! (A few minutes ago, while trying to catch up on my backlog of checking coins for errors and so forth, I picked up a beautiful BU ATB quarter, in pretty much proof-like condition --near-mirror fields (seems like Denver polishes the hell out of their dies, and Philadelphia sandblasts theirs). Like I said, a beautiful coin -- the reeding was crisp and sharp, the copper core bright and untarnished, the coin had zero wear -- and about a hundred fine scratches applied all over the reverse, very obviously placed there intentionally. I've got plenty others of that coin, but still, it bugged me. And what if it were a fifty year old coin with a low mintage, high value -- with a large cud, an RPM, and a doubled die -- and a huge "X" deeply scratched across the entire surface? (I've seen coins like that -- the "X," not the rest of it, but it's IMO a statistical certainty that the right coin will end up in the wrong hands at some point.)
