Tom,it has definitely been hammered.It looks like someone has put it in a vice with a block of wood on either side & another coin on top of this coin,& hammered the daylights out of it. Aidan.
if its hammer...what are the blobs on the right of the building? and why isnt the 2 touched but the rim under it is?
A authentic brockage looks like someone hammered it, so so what is differnent from this coin and a real one? I am not defending it as authentic, but just wondering how you can tell the difference.
obviously hammer job. they even took the time to insert the other coin upside down with the "CEN" part in order to make it not look reversed.
This coin was also gripped with a cutting plier. That is what created the mark you see on the reverse.
The blobs to the right of the building are the effects of being hammered. The reverse side of this coin will be damaged by whatever the surface it was laying on was when the two stacked coins were hit with the hammer. When you lay one coin on top of another and whack it with a hammer, the top coin bends if it is not hit dead center by the hammer blow. Where the hammer hits with the most force, the letters transfered in reverse from the reverse of the top coin will be stronger. In this case the CEN of Cent. The top coin raises away from the surface of the bottom coin around what is the T just above the date. That is why the damage stops at the numeral 2. Since the edge of the top coin is a little more involved when the hammer comes down on it, you can see the mark left by the edge coming down and around to a spot a little below the 2.
A brockage occurs when a struck coin gets stuck to one of the dies. Lets say that the coin gets stuck to the hammer die, which in this case is the obverse die. So now there is a coin with a struck reverse acting as a hammer die instead of a clear obverse die. The first Coins struck with that die will show an impression of a mirror image reverse instead of a normal obverse. In the case of a full centered brockage, the coin will have a normal reverse and in place of the obverse, a fairly strong mirror image of the reverse design as that is what will strike the next coins in the coining chamber. It sounds like double talk so I hope you are following this. Simply on coins struck like this, the reverse looks normal and the obverse looks like a reverse with all the details impressed into the coin in a mirror image. The first few strikes , pretty much obliterate most of the regular details that you would expect to see on a normal obverse so you wouldn't see much if any Lincoln or LIBERTY or the date. After a few strikes, the coin that is stuck to the die could be knocked off or it can hang on for the ride and create what we call a capped die. The coin that is stuck to the die after repeated strikes can rise up around the edges of the die and remain there. Each additional strike will make the coin that is still stuck to the die, thinner and force more metal up the side of the hammer die. As the stuck coin gets thinner, you begin to see evidence of the reverse details in a mirror image along with some of the details of Lincoln showing through since the hammer die (The heads side) by virtue of the thinner metal stuck to it can impart some of the normal obverse details to the struck coin. If the coin remains stuck after this point, you have what is called a late stage brockage or simply a capped die error. There is practically nothing left of the reverse of the coin that is stuck to the hammer die so there are no signs of a reverse being added to the obverse of the struck coins anymore. The details of the obverse are fuzzy at best since they are still being struck through a thin sheet of flattened metal which was at one time the coin that was stuck to the die. Throughout all this, you would expect to see normal reverses on the coins struck, but distorted obverses as the reverses of the coins are struck normally. Amongst other things that we come to recognize with a brockage, the fact that the coin pictured above has major damage to the reverse lets us know it was indeed smashed with a hammer. I know, clear as mud right!? have Fun, Bill
