One Penny 1861 - Date Looks Strange?

It looks as if the lower coin has received a hit at some time on the '6', and this was later worn down by a century in circulation!

There's some discussion about 1861 penny varieties here:
http://www.predecimal.com/forum/top...19f24f27f32/
You'll notice there is a comment saying that there is "little point looking at date spacing as far as the pre 1866 pennies are concerned... this is because there are far too many combinations as far as the pre 1866 reverses are concerned".

@ NumisRob I actually think it is a travesty that the date spacings on some years ( given that some have 1-2 or 3 variants) also some because of different reverse dies used on the same dates) are ignore and the fact that it is from a single die pairing which to me is more significant than the listed ate varieties on years with several die pairings. But it's that old chestnut if it isn't part of an authors collection it doesn't matter or has little significance. To me that is just ignorance. We have seen time and time again these date anomalies that were first ignored by the authors of books start to fetch high premiums. It should always be a case of documenting the coins and all their oddities and should be left to the collector to decide weather they are a collectable or not. You can't open a door and then close it because someone cannot be bothered to collect information on coins they don't have in their own collection.

In 2007 I had this same argument with CGS and blew their argument out of the water about anomalies not adding value to coins. They do and will do everytime. Thankfully they changed their policy on variety inclusion to the point now they list any change no matter how slight and that is how it should be. It is left up to ourselves to decide if it is something we would pay a premium for