This looks like post mint damage to me, but look how the features have been kinda sloshed together. It looks very strange in hand and thought you experts would have an opinion. Bob
I'm not exactly sure what you're meaning. There is a certain roughness to the surface of the coin. If that's what you mean...I'd imagine this is a zinc cent. The early zinc cents had a problem with the copper sticking to the zinc underneath and this bubbly look was the result. It's pretty common.
It looks like it was struck with a worn die. Or as CamaroDMD said it could be a problem with the copper plating.
It looks a lot worse in hand. But it seems to be bubbling and the features are weak under the chin especially. It almost looks like it was dropped in acid and the copper plating started to disolve or something. Anyway, it was just an interesting coin when I looked at it...
Yeah, the post 1982 to around 1988 or so had really bad problems with the zinc starting to deteriorate under the plating (the copper plating was too thin at first) and they get to looking pretty rough. You'll see everything from this kind of muddy effect, to dark grey/black spotting, to actual bubbles/holes in the plating. I've gotten to where I snag every nice post 1982-1990 cent I find, because so many of them are simply rotting away. Nice ones are out there, but hard to find.
