I thought this was PMD when I sent it off but it came back DP. Do you think that increases or decreases the value?
For old copper like that, I think it is pretty neutral. Not like it was damaged, but also, only certain people are interested in that kind of thing.
It has to be worth more as a defective planchet than PMD. Otherwise you could crack it out and "fix" it and make it PMD. It doesn't make much sense that as struck would be worth less than damage post strike.
You hit the key. No Problem>planchet defect>PMD in this series. Many of the early Half Cents as well as Large Cents had planchet issues to the point they have no added value like with modern coins. Those who prefer no problems still outnumber those who desire the defects so the premium is highest for no problem coins. 1795 was a particularly interesting year in this regard since the Mint used Talbot & Lee (TAL) tokens and cut them down for copper stock for the Half Cents. A few got mixed into the Large Cent stock including the only two specimens of 1795 NC-2 and I think I have a S-78 struck on the TAL Token because it's severely underweight. One rare Cent was confirmed by undertype when it was struck as a cent and cut down for use as a half cent, but I believe that was a 94. There was a series of modern struck pieces replicating the process in the Holmes 2009 sale. Anyway, this is the long way to say planchet problems were very common that year. It would be of more value if you can see an undertype from a TAL strike or prior Cent strike, but those are often very difficult or impossible to discern. But it's worth a close examination.
https://www.icollector.com/A-display-of-5-Gallery-Mint-products-reproductions-to_i8599228 It was a 1796 NC-7. "There is a fourth impression from this pair of dies, but it hardly counts as an example of the NC-7 die variety. It is actually a half cent struck over a cut-down example of this large cent variety, and the stemless wreath feature is not present as that part of the design is off the smaller planchet. The significance of the half cent is that it validated the tooled Clapp coin in the ANS as the only known example (at that time) of a distinct variety. Dr. Sheldon listed the ANS coin in his Early American Cents published in 1949 as "NC-6". When he published Penny Whimsy in 1958 Dr. Sheldon was sufficiently skeptical of the tooled coin that he "delisted" the variety, believing it was created by tooling some other known die variety."
