Hi Experts, I found this 1955 Wheat Cent and I'm not sure if this is an error or PMD. What do you all think? Did Anybody else see something like this? Thanks in advance.
damage hit by something that pushed out the backside. If you learn the minting process you'll understand that this cannot happen during the minting process .. ie, the copper would have to push into the much harder, hardened steel die.
Understood. Thanks @Clawcoins. I figured this could happen if some piece of steel from the press fell into the coin compartment during printing and did it with more coins, so I asked if anyone else has seen anything like that.
Let's supposed a piece of metal fell into the horizontal minting press. The copper is much, much softer than the hardened steel dies used to mint them. If a piece of metal did get in there it would have been pushed into the copper, and probably ejected with it. But there's really no way for the backside to be pushed out like that as the back/anvil die is much harder than the copper. Thus the copper will get pushed to the sides and not *into* the die creating the convex outward dome as the hardened steel die isn't going to "flex" for the much softer copper.
@Wal888 DEFDAM - Definitely Damaged Please remember to create your questions over at the Error Coins forum of CoinTalk!
I wouldn’t discount the possibility that some bored soul deliberately damaged that coin. It sort of looks like that some punch tool might have been used.
