What Happened To This Cent? (1913 S)

I should have been clear, I was agreeing with you about the wheat stalk area being damage.

Looks like welding or brazing spatter. No matter how you look at it, it's PMD.

Weight as I said before would you help, the OP is the one with the coin in hand and agree an acetone soak could also help. Since the rim seems to be effected as well I'm leaning towards glue or something else on the coin.

I'll keep watching this thread in case it ever gets a acetone soak.

Note how on ONE, the tops of the devices are affected? To affect the depth of the die that much I would expect that all the devices would be affected like that. But not on the top of the 'N'? You can see a lamination peel there. So I feel this is a struck through issue on the coin. If so the weight could be close to normal. On a lamination it would be affected a bit deeper on the surface. So I feel something thin uneven desbris was struck onto the coin and some areas peeled, leaving the raised high spots and the parts of it has not fallen off the coin yet.

The obverse on the date, note the wear pattern is in the opposite direction as normal die wear? These dies had the large rims on the coins and this happened different on the older wide time dies: