I quit collecting back in the 70's and about a year ago rolled 5 gallons of pennies and deposited them. The sound you hear is me banging my head on the desk, wall, anything that is harder than my head. I have found a few coins that were just put away and forgotten about. This is the first of them. A 1972 that has like extra metal that was rolled over onto the united states of america.
Since the metal is folded over the letters, I figured that may be the case. The obverse has no damage and I have been trying to figure out how this was done without other damage.
There used to be tokens that had a space to insert a cent, which would then be a sort of centerpiece. They'd be called lucky pennies, or have sayings like "keep me and never be broke". Sometimes they were redeemable for goods at a specific business. Although 1972 would be late for such a usage, the damage is consistent with it.
Definately not die deterioration. this happened after the coin left the mint. I haven't seen this effect from the encased coins either. What I have seen cause this is a coin spending time tumbling around in a commercial cloths dryer Richard
