What you are seeing is call mintmark puncheon damage. The dies are already harden before the punch of the mintmark is added. Thus the punch gets distorted. Even RPMs can show the same damage, but the RPM is not that area. Just were the mintmark shows a spread.

This one is called a north, but the punch damage is not part of the RPM.

Edited by coop
12/11/2019 7:42 pm