Hi. Breaking a 'rule' by not taking and posting a photo (at 2:30AM) here, but I figured I'd ask. I have some pretty good condition 1957D pennies. Most appear to have been stored in a roll, still shiny, few marks, etc. But one of them caught my eye. Most of them seem normal with crisp lettering. The one in question however, the letter M in America on the reverse is faint. I guess we would call that weakly struck. All of the other letters seem normally struck. Is this a fairly common defect for that year?
Okay here are pics. One of a typical 1957D with normal appearing lettering, and one of the 1957D with fading lettering in AMErica. So is this a die issue or what, and how common was this sort of thing in that year? I considered it being post minting but can't envision too many ways this would happen without marring the surrounding surface.
Here is another shot in different lighting of the same penny showing a better view of the surrounding surface.
Again different lighting, this time the normal penny with a strong clear AME... The fronts all appear normal.
Hmm, if all the letters are stamped at the same time, there would be no reason for just one of them to be weak, unless something blocked or interfered, which brings us to grease. Okay, I can accept that. Now we come back to the original question. Is it worth setting aside because someone considers this to be an error condition, or should it go into the 1957D dump on Ebay for 3 cents pile with no mention of the weak strike?
The error is not really strong enough to be considered collectable. And also, coins are not stamped, they are struck. Just for future reference. Keep up the hunt!
This area as well as the area between E PLU and the O in ONE exhibit a natural weakness on many wheat cents. The reason for this is that these areas correspond to the deepest relief elements(the top of Lincolns head and his rear shoulder) on the obverse and metal flow going into those elements and away from the anvil(reverse) die. This becomes even more pronounced as the reverse die ages and develops what is called "progressive indirect design transfer" in these areas. It's not an error in the technical sense, it's just physics. The same sort of weakness can be seen on Memorial Cents around the left area of EPU. This is one reason that they eventually started going with shallower reliefs on Lincoln's bust.
