wondering about this cent. notic the scribed line around the device. any clues?

final answer.
this is the result of the last step done before the die is released for use. final deburring, at least i see it that way. it surly must have been known but let it go. as like who will see it. how many dies affected? since the procedure was set up/done by hand ....maybe alot. 10%?

ref united states proof coins 1936-1942 page 30

 

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Just a quick note on your "final answer" - in 1942, 1942-D and 1942-S there are far too many of them for it to have been something done to a single die. The 1942/D/S trait is very distinctive. It resembles two "worms" crawling up the forehead and forelock portions of the portrait. The one on the forehead has a noticeable "hook" at the end as if an engraving tool turned back on itself. The forelock one is like a worm raising its head.

I looked through ~80 1942 coins on GC last night that I suspected had the GreatPhoto based on the auction dates, in MS66-68. I only got part way through the 186 MS66 examples. Some of these ~80 did not have a GreatPhoto. I got sick of saving images after a while, and just said "yup, has it" and moved on, unless it was a particularly clear example. I ended up saving 15 images. There must be tons more of them in the rest of 66 and the lower grades.

To be clear, there is no value impact here. It's purely just something interesting that might shed light on mint practices during this era. The only impact on value involves the one experimental coin (now two) that PCGS made a big splash about 6 years ago as being a unique "high relief" coin. That coin has the same "worms" as all of these other 1942 examples, so in my view it could not have been some special high relief hub created just to strike those two coins, and was merely a regular die that came from the same master as the rest of these. This is where my interest in it began. PCGS did not like it very much.

I'll put together some montage images at some point but for now, here are the "worms" on the 1942 coins. Look through auctions yourself if you feel like it and see how many of them there are.