Please!
Posted 04/17/2009 12:27 am
Hi Chadwick,
Welcome. Unless you have found something that remains unreported to date, I can basically explain what you have...
There are a few things that can affect the deisgn on a coin, which is the exact opposite of the same design on the die, which gets there by a process called 'hubbing'. This is where a positive reduction of the design is pressed into the die to create a negative impression (which turns positive again on the coin).
Now, if a hubbing isn't very sharp or very complete, it can cause the lowest parts of the relief of the coin to go missing or be very weak, making the letters (which are beveled) appear thinner and spaced apart a little more. This is referred to as a 'weakly hubbed die' and it happens frequently.
Another thing that happens frequently is 'die wear' - this is the effect on the die of minting a hundred thousand or more coins where the die actually starts to chip away and wear down. It sort-of pancakes outward, loses corners, definition. This can cause a design to look odd as well.
The place I'm going here is that there have only been two different designs used on cent dies since 1989, One has spacing between the A and M of AMERICA, and the other has these two letters touching or nearly touching, depending on the strength of the hubbing and the age of the die at the point that it strikes the coin. Depending on these factors as well as the actual strike on the coin, the design can take on slightly different appearances when comparing two coins of the same year.
Welcome. Unless you have found something that remains unreported to date, I can basically explain what you have...
There are a few things that can affect the deisgn on a coin, which is the exact opposite of the same design on the die, which gets there by a process called 'hubbing'. This is where a positive reduction of the design is pressed into the die to create a negative impression (which turns positive again on the coin).
Now, if a hubbing isn't very sharp or very complete, it can cause the lowest parts of the relief of the coin to go missing or be very weak, making the letters (which are beveled) appear thinner and spaced apart a little more. This is referred to as a 'weakly hubbed die' and it happens frequently.
Another thing that happens frequently is 'die wear' - this is the effect on the die of minting a hundred thousand or more coins where the die actually starts to chip away and wear down. It sort-of pancakes outward, loses corners, definition. This can cause a design to look odd as well.
The place I'm going here is that there have only been two different designs used on cent dies since 1989, One has spacing between the A and M of AMERICA, and the other has these two letters touching or nearly touching, depending on the strength of the hubbing and the age of the die at the point that it strikes the coin. Depending on these factors as well as the actual strike on the coin, the design can take on slightly different appearances when comparing two coins of the same year.
