My name is Andrea. I'm new to the coin collecting world. I found this 1982 penny and quickly got to looking for what could be wrong. I have been told by couple people that it is man made. However I think that is incorrect. You can see the building is rotated and the letters appear to be swirled like going down the toilet or something. It's crazy. Please help?
It's definitely man made so in reality the coin is damaged. What is left is part of the Lincoln Memorial, the center to be exact. Kind of neat actually.
That's interesting. I've never seen anything quite like that on a Lincoln cent. Looks like some type of customized art work, like a Hobo nickel.
First, welcome to the neighborhood, Andrea! As someone new to collecting, you're going to learn that there are billions and billions of coins out there in circulation, and some people just have nothing better to do than deface them in one way or another. If you start your collecting experience looking for oddities and errors before you have a clear understanding of the die-making and minting processes, you will find yourself thinking that every strange coin is something special when it is not. ~ Chris
Can the negative Nancy's of coin collecting give me one example on my penny that supports your post mint claims? Because I can give you about 5 that support my theory.
We are not trying to be negative. We are being truthful. You came and asked us for an answer and we gave it to you. Would you rather that we lie to you? If you knew the minting process and understood how coins are made you would know that what you see on your coin is not possible to occur when it is minted. We would love to hear your 5 theories.
We're pretty sure your 5 examples are also post mint damage too. Remember coins are made on an assembly line at thousands per minute ... So there should be many of the exact same copy.
Also PMD - Post Mint Damage.. Something struck it after it left the Mint. Or a drill bit was used on it.
Andrea I hope you didn't pay a lot for this coin . They are selling fakes on the internet every day for huge amounts. I hate to tell you but like the others have said your coin is a man made fake. I will never tell anyone this from looking at a image unless it is a easy one to idenify. Yours is extremely easy to see as a altered coin. You need to learn how coins are made at the mint before buying error coins then it is easier to learn PMD coins from real errors. good luck and keep after them.
I'm going to try to load some microscopic photos of the coin.. And a big huge thank you to every body that has posted comments.
You really don't need to do that. They are not any kind if mint errors. We are truly being honest with you. There is no reason to lie or deceive you! - Mr. Ed Specializing in collecting Mint Errors since 1986.
Now if you could only use this same rationality with your 2 damaged and man made coins we could all get along. Hey, at least you got this one right.
See if this helps clear things up. This is a set of dies that hammered out untold millions of cents. The newly minted cents passed through these dies faster than your eyes can follow. If the US mint had created a set of dies with only a portion of the Lincoln Memorial showing then many thousands of them would have been produced and they would have been a recognized error/variety long before now..... Also take into account that copper is a very soft metal and lends itself to being modified by frustrated artisans with too much time on their hands. They show up on these pages frequently.