Question On 3 Shillings

Frankallen - the coin was made that way. There is a die (possibly a repaired die) where for some reason the letters in question are slightly depressed into the die surface further than the others. When struck more metal flows to the area making it higher than the surrounding area. This causes the majority of wear to focus on that one spot. I own one that looks like yours. So in my opinion it is less of a wear issue than a production defect.

There are die designs that contribute to this early wear phenomenon. Buffalo nickel dates - Standing Liberty 25 cents before 1925. The word WE in the motto on 2 cent coins. The list of uneven designs is lengthy, but there are other causes not related to the design itself.

This happens often with redated dies. Many coins from the 1830s made in Mexico were made with redated dies. Dies made in one year were not used and were redated for the next (or some other subsequent) year. The easiest way to envision a process that eroded (deepened) the die is to scrape off the old number (it is incuse on the die). This makes a fairly deep hole (depression) which depending on depth may or may not have been "leveled". On some coins it looks like the last digit is missing because of it. At times, the date simply didn't strike up fully while at others the altered portion of the date wears off first because it ends up on a "hill".

Filling in the die with metal then recutting a new digit also happened. But this repair seems to produce many of the visible overdates since the "fill" in a digit tends to chip out eventually. Of course some die makers made no effort to remove the old date or error at all. Those are the most visible - spectacular- die repairs.

In your case, I envision that the original state of the die may have been spelled TOEKN. The die sinker noticed his error and cut the wrong letters out and put the corrected spelling in. These letters are not deeply sunk - so it makes most sense to me that the depression in the die would not have been filled and leveled.

With all that said - there is of course another possibility - isn't there always. Some designs are too deep on one side causing too much metal flow on that side resulting in a lack of flow on the other side. This weakness does correspond with the King's jaw so it is possible. But I not only prefer the above explaination - on my copy the alignment os not perfect.

For a modern example of this phenomenon - look at a few wheat back US cents. Lincoln's forehead causes a lot of weakness in the word ONE.