Requesting Intelligent, Well-Thought-Out Opinions IHC

This is one of the most bizarre coins you are likely to see. On the obverse, the leading edge of the Indian head is reproduced perhaps 6 additional times to the left, toward the edge of the coin. The red arrow I have added points to the top of one of the additional feathers. The first few letters of LIBERTY are also reproduced, so there is a row stretching across that is something like LIBLIBLIBLIBLIBLIBLIBERTY.

The reverse is even more bizarre. I have made a sketch (please forgive the crudity) of a FEW of the many designs. The off-center Lady Liberty, to me, resembles the design (first version) on the 1792 Birch Cent, with the shorter curly hair. The curls here are quite prominent, along the circumference of the head.

The red arrow points at a version of the foot of a Flying Eagle. The foot is quite prominent on the coin, even to the naked eye. The foot seems to be a more refined version of that detail than what can be seen on the regular production cent, pattern cents, Gobrecht dollar, etc. I believe that the eagle was reproduced several times on this and that a lot of what is seen are feathers....the loops and the parallel lines of the feathers from a Flying Eagle version.

I believe that this planchet was used over and over again at the Mint as a die trial planchet....a roughout piece for first test strikes to get a basic first look before a design or partial design was struck on its own planchet that had not been used before. Close study of the obverse seems to indicate the presence of a number of large eagles that are heads only, without accompanying bodies. Eyes, eye sockets, and beaks are fairly prominent.

I think that a large share of the designs on this specimen were proposals for the gold dollar series. Based upon the size of the foot of the Flying Eagle, for example, the entire design in that size would have fit on a gold dollar.

This is the most likely scenario that I can come up with to explain this. It's not likely that a counterfeiter of some kind would produce something smaller in size and more refined...they want to try to copy the known, not the unknown. Maybe this was used by an apprentice-level worker at the Mint?

Obviously, this is not a pristine specimen of one individual pattern. Yet, it seems to me that there is quite a lot to be learned from it. I am not aware of another existing version of the Flying Eagle design in such small size. Nor the Birch style of Lady Liberty....and she can be seen quite prominently on the coin with the naked eye, raised up in relief and not incuse as if the design had been the result of some kind of sandwich squashing of one coin into another.

Again, I would appreciate some DECENT opinions. Elsewhere, in the past, people have attempted to attribute all of the anomalies to weathering. That flies completely in the face of the scientific method. Weathering can not reproduce VERY SPECIFIC designs.

Thanks for reading and taking a serious look.