We have a guy that makes these for a living . I went to visit him at huge Fair we Call The Big E in West Springfield MA . Some like myself don't mind what he does . Some call de-facing Coins . Their most worn anyways and probably headed for the fire pit anyways so to speak . I have one .I'll post in the Morning if I can find the darn thing.
Neat cutout. While metal detecting, I once dug a tiny triangular section from a Standing Liberty quarter. It was the leftover remnant from someone making a piece of cutout coin jewelry like that. It was the area that said E PLURIBUS UNUM. I'd have rather found an intact SLQ, of course (and later did, on the same site), but it was an interesting find. Because that little triangular scrap followed the contour of the eagle's wings, you could tell that the cutout jewelry (wherever it ended up) had featured the eagle side rather than the Liberty side. I guess they used a small jigsaw at the time. That looks to have been the case with the Italian coin in the OP as well. I'm not sure if they use lasers more nowadays? Can they cut metal with lasers? I guess so.
