Raised linear lines found on Seated Half and Bust Quarter - not scratches

Hello.....I'm new to "Coin Talk" so bear with me. I hope I'm posting this thread correctly.
The Seated Half above is dated 1869 and I own that coin. The bust quarter from 1836 is an image I found and saved from an on-line auction. I saved the obverse quarter image as it has similar markings to the ones on the reverse of my 1869 Seated Half. The half dollar has 2 pair of raised bisecting lines and the quarter has something somewhat similar. I believe the raised lines are a result of being struck with dies that have been altered for some reason. My thoughts are the lines were incised into the die before striking creating the raised lines. I'm thinking they were meant to measure distance or angulation (??). I have a strong numismatic background but not too strong with errors or knowledge with die forming procedure or early die measurements. - So I'm hoping someone can clarify what these marking indicate. Thanks in advance.

 

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Very interesting , I can't wait for answers to this one , Thanks for posting and WELCOME to the forum !

 

pmd

 

I would say blisters but those are the weirdest blisters on a coin I have ever seen... Welcome to CT!

 

Strange indeed. I hope some of our experts chime in as I'd love to know what caused that.

Welcome to CT BTW.

 

Knife cuts. These raise up metal adjacent to the cut. The raised metal eventually wears down and covers up the cut, leaving a ridge.

 

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Thank you for all the nice welcomes. Thank you for your response. Very nice of all of you. - - -
I'm trying to envision knife cuts where the displaced metal could wear down and fill in the negative space on a lightly circulated XF/AU bust quarter and I'm having a difficult time doing that. Would not the displaced metal have to be dramatically even and equal on both sides of the "divot" to wear & recover evenly to fill it in so thoroughly? Would it not need substantial friction and time? Could the mass of displaced metal fill in and exceed the volume of the negative space? The elevated ridges on the seated half are substantial where they overlie the olive leaves. If one was to "evacuate" the ridges, would negative space remain under the linear metal mass? - - - Just some food for thought. I do have some metallurgy and physics buried in my brain mixed in with the numismatics...so I'm trying to envision knife cuts where the displaced metal can so "nicely" fill the void...especially on a lightly circulated coin.

 

I agree. No question about it.

 

messydesk is correct. This is nothing new. It's the known cause for the look of your coin.

 

Unfortunately damaged as explained. Welcome to CT.

 

If the cut is at a shallow angle, the raised area of displaced metal can get pushed down over most/all of the original cut. Circulation can push it down, but there isn't enough pressure to compact it back into the cut. There have been examples posted here in the past

If you look closely with your loupe, you may still see remnants of the original cut. It might be to the right of the vertical cut and bottom of the horizontal, but its very difficult to tell from the pics