I know, I said I had a punch kit on guitar players post. But trust me, I found this in the bottom of the bag of 1998 P Lincoln Cents I was searching. It was in about the last 50 or so coins in the original mint sealed bag. Aside from my poor pic skills this appears to be the right font size, upside down in the photo but clearly a "E". In hand it is crystal clear, here, a bit muddled. I'm open to all comments, but on my mother/father/brothers grave I did not create this and I don't use this terminology lightly. You folks should know by now I would not pull a stunt on you. Unless this was some mint techs idea of having a fun time while having a boring day I'm hoping for a dropped letter. How? I don't have a clue and am hoping for an explanation. Thanks all. Tom
It's four dents, I think. Three of them are short parallel lines, and there's a mashed area to one side; that's all your brain needs to construct a capital E. But notice that the bottom-right bar in the image is curved, and the top one is a bit shorter than the other two. It's still close enough to be recognized as an E, but it's not quite an E. It also looks like it's almost the same size as the E in LIBERTY, but it's actually distinctly smaller, I think. Looks like pareidolia to me. But then, I'm the guy who struggles to recognize actual faces on people, so what do I know?
I'll check back in on this tomorrow. Internet here has been wonky for several days and I'm off to start a new bag of these.
Not sure what it is but I think it stands for exciting. Not a dropped letter I'm sorry to say. I can't help but think it was scratched somewhere in the coining process after the image was placed on the planchet and before it received its copper bath, err coating. Kinda neat in my opinion.
Tommy, I know this is a bad joke, so, you're allowed to smack me if you want, but..... .......is it legal to put your mother, father and brother in one grave?
I am totally not an errors sort of coin guy. But I gotta say.... That is as clearly of a defined “E” as I could ever imagine....... Here’s my wacko theory. You say at the bottom of a bag of cents. Now I don’t know how heavy a bag of cents is. Could somebody have dropped the bag and a letter transferred into the soft copper?... Hopefully @paddyman98 will chime in here soon.
Sounds plausible Jeff. I was actually thinking the "E" in "We" as being a bit more similar. The "E" in Liberty tends to look a bit blockier. After looking thru 5,000 of these my mind certainly could have been playing tricks. ( And still might be ) LOL. I would not even have a clue as to how a dropped letter could even be possible
Sorry Sal, I'm not prone to pareidolia. That's why I asked and accept any and all possibilities here. No arguments. Even saying looking for a dropped letter was more tounge in cheek humor.
Another possibility. I'm certainly not going to send it in to a TPG and waste good money but am going to just set aside as an oddity.
I'm going to get disagreements, and it is what it is. My opinion, it's a dropped E from the reverse die (hammer die that year) that dropped out and fell on the obverse anvil die, the E in e pluribus unum but it's a bit more smashed from the strike. They eventually disappear and get obliterated in the strike after it drops out, it's not really a letter literally falling off of a die, but grease and debris/dust filling a letter, hardening in the strike, and dropping out of the die where for a couple strikes it impresses the letter or number until it's obliterated. it can fall on the die, or fall on the planchet, depending on how it falls,and where it gets stuck is. No idea why so many people on here are always so against this happening. it's a pretty well documented, real occurring die/strike event. the E pluribus area is a really common place to get filled with grease and not strike up letters also. http://www.error-ref.com/struck-through_dropped_filling/
Well John, you have enlightened me at the very least on how the die works. I'm always saying I'm learning something new here and this was a great example. And wouldn't you know it, there were about a half dozen dirty coins in the bottom where I found this. Possibly from this scenario. Probably a co-incidence but who knows.
If you have a chance can you post a picture of the reverse also, I'm curious how the E pluribus Unum looks. also if it's a 1998 Wide AM (lol I'm sure that's likely what you were looking for in the first place!) A video of Philadelphia striking coins. they go so fast nowadays, there isn't stops to clean, and a lot of times the grease filled letter or number drops out but sometimes it gets caught up on the same die, or on a planchet, or tossed from one die to the other in between coins. I've seen a 2008 Idaho quarter with a struck through R. and Cents with Dropped "A"s, ect. anyways, Philadelphia uses horizontal presses, but it's not a factor with the speed they run it at at all.
