I've had this one for a while. Two-thirds of the Obverse is perfectly normal. The remaining third shows STRONG smushing (for ant of a better term) from lincoln's nose through the front part of his chest and obliterates most of the date and mintmark. I thought someone sanded it (note lines following the pattern), but there are no corresponding scratches on the rims, top and bottom. I'm thinking it's MD, but WHAT mint equipment could have caused this? What look like vise marks on the reverse are rows of little black dots following what looks like an old fingerprint. No physical damage. Fun one.
It looks like it was "smushed" by a grease-filled die, and as such, wouldn't be worth any premium. Chris
grease-filled die nice i have a few coins like that a quarter and such.. there rare in a sense they dont come out that often send it to be graded.. its worth it..ohh and its a 2000 D
Save your money! It's not worth getting slabbed. These are just coversation pieces and you'll be losing your shirt if you ever tried to sell it later. Collectors buy the coin not the slab. It's worth whatever you can get for it and it won't be much more than a few cents.
I'm having a little bit of trouble with it being just a GFD. My main reason is the linear scratch pattern. I would think that would be inconsistent with the blobbiness of GFD. Comments?
No, the color is entirely UNaccurate. The Celestron digital microscope i'm using has 6 painfully bright LEDs that overwhelm the coin's color. The actual color is the usual copper color uniformly across, including the smushed area.
It's difficult to see the "linear scratch pattern". I don't think it's an error. If you could get pics with a normal camera it might be easier to tell what it is.
"scratches" The slightly off vertical lines are shown fairly clearly in pix 4 and 5. I'll see if I can come up with something better.
The die wasn't completely filled with grease, that is why the details partially show. The linear pattern is from roller marks on the original surface of the planchet not being wiped out by the force of the strike. The flat surface of the fields of the die would have wiped them out but the surface of the grease conformed to them and did not wipe them out.
