It's interesting to go through the technical challenges that the mint faces when creating something that will produce quicky, accurately, and with no breakdowns. Die longevity is one challenge.. The "Liberty extra curl" as I've seen it called, is a lump between 2 of her curls. If you envision the NEGATIVE image of the coin, (the die) you see that the place where the "extra curl" shows up is where there would normally be one of the sharpest peaks, rising the highest off the die (penetrating deepest into the slug). If you could see the thickness of the metal JUST BELOW that high peak. you could imagine that the design on the obverse isn't TOTALLY up to the artist (I bet that pains the artist too) because the location on the REVERSE of the deepest dig, shouldn't risk a fracture by design.. that is, the design on the OBVERSE better not have deep troths in OR WORSE, SLIGHTLY ASKEW of the same location. (um, someone like me would ASSUME the mint takes these things into consideration if there is indeed a greater risk of failure) Well, having just today identified yet another anomoly on the GW dollar coin, it struck me (no pun intended) that the issue I found (not calling it an error or anything else on purpouse) location is *just about* exactly opposite of the liberty extra curl... and that in thinking a little further, I can imagine the sequence of events at the press.. with all the executives called to the engineering office... "Ok boys, the engineers have discovered that the reason that these little chips are flying off the obverse die in Liberty's hair is that the 2 deepest penetrating spots on each die are exactly lined up with each other.. to test this, we are going to modify a obverse die so that the valley isn't so deep, and the 2 dies will be farther apart upon strike.. and less angular force will be exherted on the hair region due to the increased amount of soft metal buffer... errr.. or something.." This idea, fortunately, a test laid out by an engineer, is the only one attempted because the other ideas... - rotate one die 20 degrees - don't press them so hard - offset one die from the other - make the slugs thinner to start were all submitted by the manager's secretaries on their behalf earlier, and were rejected. So the plan was to grind off the obverse die in the area opposite of Liberty's hair... Washington's COLLAR detail. This text of course is purely for fun..albeit a bit plausible.. but now that I've got your attention and you've had a laugh.. check out the buff-job someone did on the obverse die that struck this coin.. this is what the coin would look like on the obverse, if the above scenario played out.. a grind RIGHT AT THAT LOCATION. (eyeballed it.. HEY, someone drill a hole at the liberty-extra-curl location and see haha) (PS, I have 5 of these)... note one picture is of a NORMAL coin for comparison... and I show another picture of a scrape that appears on each coin near washington's left (your right) side of hairpiece. Just looks like someone touched the die on a grinder.. only the HIGH SPOTS are removed.. IMPOSSIBLE to counterfeit on a coin as you'd have to fill the valley and make scrape marks in it withOUT scraping the high points of washington's jacket.
I have now found that this area of the coat collar is indeed where the reverse pattern can be seen after a die clash.. and I've bought the coin that proves it What this looks like to me is after a clash, an operator may have removed the dies, and a technician then recycled the set by grinding off the reverse pattern from the obverse die. No way would that perfectly parallell set of streaks result from anything other than a grinding die during a repair.. Besides the half dozen I found that are like my picture, I've found in my own pile, ONE coin that shows a "more professionsl looking" repair of a minor clashed die. Look at yours, in the area of the tip of the jacket collar for marred detail (tip of what looks like a big shark-tooth shape) you might find one. I dub this the "sharktooth grinding".. well, I suppose we could go with "MOCR" - minor obverse clash repair. Having seen some of the mag articles on the Washingtons.. this story is not so lame and may be article-worthy?? ;P opinions?
heh.. well at least SOMEONE replied.. How about "that type has always been known as die polishing" Thanks.. I suppose you COULD have been more cruel.
Die ABRASION Those stopping in here to read.... I have opinion from *the* expert in this field, Mr Ken Potter himself.. ( http://koinpro.tripod.com/ ) that the word "polishing" is incorrect.. that it is "die abrasion" or a die scrape from a feeder mechanism.. and "(not polish)". We all can learn things.. edited to conform to forum rules. We can additionally learn to NOT stop researching when the FIRST opinion appears.
