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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1142398, member: 27832&quot;]I&#039;d certainly expect the very highest points to be fragile, and subject to flattening -- but I think that would show up as visible <i>damage</i>, not &quot;normal wear&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>As some coins wear, their lettering broadens -- but I think that&#039;s because the profile of the detail is wider near the field than at the &quot;peak&quot;. In other words, if you took a cross-section through the lettering, the strokes of the letters would be &quot;wedge-shaped&quot;, wider at their base than at the top.</p><p><br /></p><p>If &quot;mashing down&quot; really does happen significantly, I&#039;d expect some fine details to get &quot;mushroomed out&quot; at the top, with actual overhangs. Again, I haven&#039;t seen that, except on coins that were obviously damaged.</p><p><br /></p><p>I imagine that bag marks and nicks on MS coins are probably more a matter of moving metal around, not gouging it out or slicing it off. But I&#039;m still convinced that actual <i>wear</i> comes from the <i>removal</i> of metal, not mashing it down.</p><p><br /></p><p>Again, if someone comes up with a reasonable experiment for simulating wear (that doesn&#039;t beg the question of what constitutes &quot;normal wear&quot; processes), I&#039;d love to try it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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