I am nearly sure that it is caused from grease, but I am just wondering what everyone thinks. The L and I are missing from Liberty the last T on trust is missing and I can barely make out a 3 with my loupe. I also found a 1996 D that looks like a old vinyl record. I checked out the lincoln resource page and couldn't find examples of these. I can try and get some pictures up.
You need to take the pictures looking straight at the coin. Preferably in sunlight, not flash. Flash will wash them out.
Those clouds will actually make the photos come out better. Direct Sunlight will cause the same thing as a flash. If your using a normal digital camera it will compensate for that. No flash, just available light. Good idea for the black background. Missing letters and numbers and not from wear are not as uncommon as you may think. At coin shows they sell for about $1 to $10 pending on wear, date, denomination, etc. Error collectors like those.
Ok, second go at picture taking. I still can't get the small circular lines going all around the 96 to show up in the picture. But at least the 93 comes in a bit clearer. The 96 has the vinyl record look throughout but can only be seen next to the "WE", what causes that error?
Simms- As for the '96-D, check out this link(about 3/4 down the page or hit Ctrl-F and type in 1996-D and that should take you right to it). That's probably the coin you have. Those are lathe lines. Nice find if it is indeed from the same die. http://hermes.csd.net/~coneca/
My 96 looks just like that one, but it seems like they're saying many are in circulation, so not too much value. I'll keep mine for novelty, its hard to pass on a free one, or well one that cost me a cent. Only 20 more dollars in rolled cents for me to go through till my next box of 25$.
