1935 Walking Liberty Missing In God We Trust.

To me it looks like the slug/blank was compressed or something. It looks like a compression wave in imperfect metal. No, not a dremel, those are not grinding marks, they're like little waves in the sand you find when the tide goes out. I studied the thing for hours before posting on a coin message board, but thanks?

Welcome to the forum!

That looks like a toughie
Assuming that you are correct and that it it is not actual damage, my best guess would be that it was possibly struck on a defective planchet.

Maybe Struck Through Grease or something? It does look like a wave effect to me. The Y in liberty also partially shows, which I think it would be in a strike through since it has a higher profile than the in god we trust. Welcome to the forum Ezextra, and wait for other opinions, I don't guarantee mine to be accurate.

Thanks for all the replies! Let me just point out and mention some other observations about the coin. First, after you click the link, click the picture to make it huge, the link shows the pic at about 65%.

And about the coin that you CAN see in the scan: The wave effect travels through the T and mostly in the Y in LIBERTY, making the Y ripple mostly. I think if it were ground, scraped, rubbed, that the Y would clearly show it as being ground down, exposing the metal differently, with sharper edges or flattened, instead of being rounded and not as sharp as the L for example.

The horizontal line that's perpendicular to the rippling effect is ALSO a compression type effect (not a scratch in the coin, like a fault line in the earth, as you can see parallel ripples above and below it faintly.

There is a rainbowing/3-D effect that runs from the bottom center of the coin (the 5 in 1935 seems like a deeper strike than the other numbers in the date) all the way up past the T area.

The area of the I in LIBERTY also has what seems like a faint rippling effect going toward the rim. Overall, all of the blank space areas of the coin front are not "smooth" as the rest of the 35 Walking Liberty's that I have. The whole thing has the appearance of imperfect metal, which of course as we now know: SUNK THE TITANIC!! :)

Thanks again for all of your opinions, no matter how useful or useless they may be ;)

Leather perhaps, or something else? I've never seen such a thing, but I have seen other metals having nothing to do with coins with a similar rippled look, specifically iron & lead.

Thanks for enlarging! It's the whole reason that I made such a humangous file for inspection, so I appreciate your close look. Please be more specific when you refer to "damage to the rim", as I see nothing about the entire rim that differs from the area in question... SO, my question is: if the pile of coins that I have have been sitting literally in a box since the late 40's and in the family... what would have possessed someone, at that time in history, to do this to the coin in what appears to be a specific area, for whatever reason, and then just toss it into circulation, save it, whatever? And if your theory is correct, please let me know exactly what chemical would "etch" a coin enough to remove the motto, not damage the rest of the coin, particularly the obverse, and leave such a rippling effect behind. In the meantime, I'll be going to a local coin fat-ass (he's good but I hate the sloppy turd, bad attitude, doesn't seem to shower) for an up close and personal exam on Moonday. If he turns out to be too sweaty and surly, I'll go to my other dealer to see what he thinks...

Also, as an aside: Has anyone ever heard of ANY coin, at ANY time, have an error such as this (not counting the 1922 Lincoln Cent with the worn out dies that left little or no mint mark) where a section is just not there, with or without damage to the rest of the coin?

I'm new at this kind of thing, and now getting addicted to reading about errors, toning (still confuses me as to why they are more valuable than white silver) and other out of the ordinary things....

I collected when I was a kid, and now seem to have that bug again!

YAY!

> where a section is just not there, with or without damage to the rest of the coin?

Greased filled dies.