@tlm, first welcome to CCF. Second, when I crop and enlarge your photo, I kinda see the pot you are talking about. As others have said, a nice close-up would go along ways to helping you. With that said, this looks like a raised area near EPU and the stem. This distortion typically happens when a coin is punched on the other side and some metal swells to match the displaced metal, but it could also happen if this coin was exposed to high heat. Seeing an overall pic of the front of the coin would help to determine which of these you might have here.

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