1840 Large Cent With Raised Bits On Obverse - Looks PSD But...

At least I am not alone in wondering about this one. Still just keeping it as a whatzit unless someone homes in on something better.

Thanks everyone for your comments! It's very helpful with a coin like this.

Its hard to tell if its raised or inset into the coin. I'd "feel" it with the tip of a toothpick to see if the tip drops into a valley, or gets stopped by a ridge. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you have the coin in hand.

I don't have a problem with the idea that this is related to cuts in the coin, other than the amount of metal involved. How does a little cut put all that metal out in the field in front of the neck?

And as noted in my original post, they are raised. Photos can be deceiving about such things so I said that right up front.

Pretty sure this will remain a whatzit at this point favoring PMD of some kind as no viable mint option has come out other than die defacement and I would think if that occurred then these would be a known thing by now.

Ow my eyes!

Okay, so that was a different suggestion so I had to try it.

Hi all, new subscriber here.

I just found this thread after doing a search for large cent defaced dies.



I've had this coin for decades, I have no memory of when or where I got it. I'd always assumed it was simple PSD, but a friend just pointed out that, although there is some indent, there seems to be more metal pushed up than down. I looked at it closer than I ever had and noticed that the die was clearly cracked, so I wondered if this coin was struck after the die was retired.

When I found this thread I noticed some remarkable similarities between the two coins - the OP's coin has 2 1/2 H's and what looks a (less prominent) A or triangle, mine has WHH and a similar A or triangle, stamped with a tool of roughly the same size.

The die crack runs diagonally from between the "9" and "*", just below the ear, through the corner of the "L", coming out the front of the crown. The difference in height across the crack is very prominent through the neck.

There is also what looks like a Rockwell punch mark in the poor lady's ear, with no matching mark on the obverse.

I'm not fully convinced that mine's not PSD, but the similarities in defacement seemed like enough of a coincidence to make me wonder.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, I couldn't find my closeup camera so it was taken with a cell phone.

To CCF duck! Well, that's very coincidental. Not really sure what to say. Almost unexplained.

to the Community, duck!