Interesting Odd Liberty Nickel Error

JeffMTampa

I recently purchased a 1894 Liberty Nickel in a NGC MS 63 holder; I plan on crossing it at PCGS. There's a very interesting error on the reverse I'm having a difficult time figuring it out:





There's a gouge in the fields through the word CENT. I'm guessing it was from a defective planchet. The odd thing is how perfectly struck the "E" is bridging over this gouge. When the coin was struck why did the metal flow so fully into the "E" but not fill the gouge? Has anyone encountered this before? Or am I getting this all wrong?

CaptHenway

My guess would be a blob of hardened grease on the die that was only on the field. Whatever caused the smear, the metal motion in and out of the letters during previous strikes erased the grease from the lettering.

ricko

That certainly is different...have not seen that effect before. Cheers, RickO

Coin Finder

Fred will know. To me it looks like a gas bubble on type 1 planchet before polishing, then struck over with dies

JeffMTampa

The depression in the field has a granular appearance, as though it's raw unrolled/ unstruck metal. It doesn't look like something struck the planchet to cause the depression. But I also can't understand how the perfect looking "E" could bridge the gap if this were the case.

I can't imagine it's PMD unless someone very skillfully removed the metal (which it does not look like).

grip

I have a 1999 silver proof set the reverse of the Lincoln showing the
same thing (under the n on one) I think it's a planchet flaw , the
bubble being there than collapsed after being struck.JMO

johnny9434

ive never seen anything like that before.

JeffMTampa

I took z look with a 16X loop tonight- the depression is about 1/16" deep on the top side and slopes up to flush on the bottom. The "E" flows down to the bottom of the trough and the top of the letter looks to be at the same height as the adjacent digits.

I'm still puzzled how this happened; maybe I need to get a life.....

grip

Fred, where are you

lordmarcovan

I'd have said "definite planchet flaw", but you're right- it's bizarre how that well-struck "E" bridges the chasm perfectly.

Who's the member who posts those amazing microphotographs of Lincoln cent mintmarks in amazing detail that looks like Martian terrain? I'll have to go look at one of the old C4TW threads to see. That person could take some fascinating pix of this. (Y'all know who I'm talking about.)

Edit- aha- rpmsrpms was the person I was thinking of.

1Stock

There's an 1893-CC Eagle on Ebay (not mine) with the same type of planchet defect where one of the stars is struck over the flaw.

lordmarcovan

I've seen this phenomenon before, once or twice, but never really knew how to classify it or what to call it.

JeffMTampa

I'll see if I can get better pics of it this weekend. I doubt this error has value, but I really would like to know what happened. Perhaps David Blaine is involved somehow?

FredWeinberg

Mornin' guys -

Interesting area, that's for sure.

Tom (the Captain) has a good possibility,
and here's another:

There was a thin small laminated area on
the planchet before it was struck. The
striking pressure was sufficient for the
metal to move into the lettering, but it still left
part of the 'void' on original laminated planchet.

Notice how the bottom left of the "N" is a bit
soft/unformed - might that not be the deepest area on
the planchet?

Anyway, that's my first thought when I saw the
photos this morning when I clicked this thread.

ToughCOINS

I have a couple of quarter eagles in my eBay store that exhibit similar effects, except that the planchets were either gouged or scratched through areas where lettering ultimately raised up while the flaws remained in the fields.

CaptHenway

The pressure is greater where the field meets the planchet than in the depths of the lettering.

If it was a void in the planchet and the striking pressure was not enough to obliterate the void at the level of the field, it would not obliterate the void at the level deeper in the die.

I do not know if my theory is correct, but so far it is the only one I have seen that might work.

TD

TopographicOceans

Maybe the planchet had a divot before it was struck?

morgandollar1878

Certainly an interesting error, I have never seen one like that before. My first thought was a strike through, but that makes no sense to me because my thought is the letters that should be affected would not be there or would be super mushy. So, like Fred W and a couple others have described it as being a planchet flaw makes the most sense to me.