1889
Indian pennies with missing denticles.
brian's coin is not lighted well for the pix and the coin is darkened by age & circulation, so it's a little difficult to determine anything beyond 'no denticles'.
on the pix of my coin you can see on the obverse and reverse there are no denticles, except there seem to be traces of where the denticles either were or where they were supposed to be. notice all the little 'points' around the rim where the denticles should be. there are denticle traces, almost like footprints... but... the coin doesn't appear to have any other damage around those footprints. other damage around those areas would indicate to me that the denticles were somehow precision-ground off the coin sometime after leaving the mint. if it were
PMD, there would be other indications of that. likewise for the other proposed solutions:
rolled-up edges? I have to say no to that. the coin is the same size in diameter as all the other
Indian pennies I have.
Dryer Coin? no, there would be very obvious marks all over the coin, including the rim & edges. I don't see that on either coin.
let's entertain the idea of
PMD for a minute. let's say 'prisoner with too much time on his hands'. so a prisoner is sitting in his cell,
Indian penny in hand. let's say he's sitting in the prison machine shop (do they have those in prison?) looking at his penny. he wants to do something to/with the penny. what's he gonna do? does he have a tool or tools that will grind the denticles off an
Indian penny, leaving no other traces of damage? and of all the things he could do to a penny, would he naturally just choose to grind off all the denticles? or would he be inclined to attempt something else, like etch a pic or his initials or 'mom' into a field? or a counterstamp? I would think grinding off the denticles around the edges of both the obverse and reverse would not occur to the average prisoner.
and then consider that brian and I each have the same issue on the same date coin. I would think it highly unlikely that brian's coin and my coin both bear
PMD. each coin is missing denticles, and to me that is an issue caused at the mint. is it possible that the mint used dies that had denticles removed? is it possible that during the process of minting of these coins the denticles just failed to be impressed upon them, for whatever reason? i'm not an expert on the coin minting process, but just from what I see on both coins i'd have to say the denticles failed to fully imprint or the dies had the denticles removed before minting. i'm just guessing.
i tried contacting brian about his coin, but it looks to me that he joined this forum just to ask about his coin, didn't get a favorable reply and bailed.
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Posted 05/22/2016 4:56 pm
