Like the title says why would someone do this to think coin? I'm thinking a mad ex wife or girlfriend
I have a French medal in my collection which has the name of the recipient totally obliterated in the exergue. My first impression was the same as yours. It was damaged by an irate ex before it was returned to the owner. I'm wondering why someone would bid $219.50 on the Lincoln cent!
Only a very small percentage of people know about the 1909 S-VDB. For the rest of the US it's just another cent (penny to them).
There were around 480,000 1909 S- VDB's in the mix of a trillion penny's "just a guess" This one had to be chosen for damage?? Iv'e seen weirder odds though..
Yep. Sometimes the point of art is to make a statement. Vandalizing an S VDB makes a different statement from vandalizing a 1957-D. I almost put sneer quotes around "point", "art", and "make a statement", but meh. I don't live in the art world.
It happens. I still remember a dealer with an 1877 cent. Fully BU, partially red, offstruck maybe 30% but still have full date. He couldn't sell the coin. No date collector wanted to pay 1877 money for an offcenter coin, and no error collector wanted to pay 1877 money for a simple offcenter indian head.
Chances are, the damage was done when that was just a random cent from circulation. The perpetrator might not have had the first idea that it was a rare coin. It was just another "penny", as far as they were concerned. Stuff like that happened all the time, "out in the wild". Sure, that's a travesty to a collector, but to a random member of the general public in the early 1900s, it was something to practice his knife skills on (or whatever happened there- if it was even deliberate). Sometimes there is no "why". There is just "because".
i once owned an half dime, (forget the date, lol) that was encased in a heavy lead base, round on the bottom, i used a hack saw to get at the coin (only nicked the rim a little bit), the reverse was ms-67 (or better), but the obverse was only f-12 at best, due to being a pocket piece, or whatever, i think i sold it for about 15.00 this was maybe 40 years ago..lol
Positing a theory... The wear on the damage kinda matches the wear on Lincoln’s ear, cheek and jaw. Extrapolating wear over time the damage occurred around 1929, it continued to circulate for a few more years and then got discovered and pulled from circ...imho...Spark
Worth nothing if it was a 1957D. Lowest mintage Lincoln cent? Still has a value as a hole filler for someone's collection.
I can't imagine why someone would deliberately deface an American icon or for that matter any coin. For arts sake my A.. its downright stupidity! Second to this is why anyone would pay $200+ for it, other than to say they have one, wow.