I'd have to say planchet defect. I think if you look at the edge of the coin in the affected area (from the Y down on the obv, and MER on the rev - same area opposite sides) you'll see that it is quite thin right there.
How is it the collar is affected if it's just a planchet defect? This happened to this coin while it was collared.
When the planchet is too thin (defective) in one spot, when the coin is struck, there isn't enough metal there to fill the recesses in the die in that specific area. That results with what you see in this coin. And you can also tell that's what the cause was because of the way the rim dives down into the thin area on each side of that thin area. And this is apparent on both the obv and rev of the coin. Like I said above, if you took the coin out of that holder and took a picture of the edge in the affected area, you would see that the edge is very thin right there. And it would taper down from both the left and the right to the thinnest spot in the middle.
But why is the rim also affected in that area? That wouldn't be simply because the rim was thin in that area.
Well Sean, then that's hardly enough to have not taken the full impact from the dies. Those faint and missing letters on both sides should have been struck in better than they had been. I'm still suspecting something post-mint did this.
I'm going to agree and say that it is a (minor) planchet defect. It is cool, but a defect this minor is more likely to detract from the value of a coin - it isn't big enough to attract error collectors, but it is big enough to notice.
That is what happens when the planchet is too thin Eddie - there's simply not enough metal in that specific spot to fill the dies. And that picture clearly shows it.
I see it's thinned, Doug. I'll have to take your experience on this. I'm surprised, though, that's all it takes.
I reckon so, lol! I can see where the edges in that thiner area are pinched inward a little bit, too. Ah, like they say, you never know so much you can't learn more.
Well, when you take into consideration that the height of the legends on each side (obv/rev), and the height of the rim on each side is but a fraction of a millimeter above the height of the fields, then you begin to realize that there doesn't really have to be a whole lot of metal missing in the overall thickness of the planchet for those parts of the coin not to form when the coin is struck. It's not taking those things into consideration that causes a lot of people not to understand, or realize, how such a thing happens.
