Weird trails on 97 P Lincoln

[BIM Mania]

I am awfully curious about this one.

It is the reverse of a 97 P Lincoln.

The trails leading away from the upper portion of the letters in 'UNITED' are not off-set to any great degree. They stop at the rim. Some of the letters in 'STATES OF' have this trailing as well, but it is most pronounced here on 'UNITED'.

The coin has some other wild distortions happening that extend from the bottom step of the stairs, but I am having difficulty getting a good picture.

I found this one rather interesting and dramatic.

Thanks,

Jeff

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p111/apache_2007/lincoln97TrailsUNITED.jpg

[wavysteps]

Hi Jeff - these lines appear to be the beginning of die deterioration. Trail lines are in one direction (sometimes in two, either at reciprocal bearing or in very rare instances a different direction) and are not radial as these are.

I have noticed and I am not to sure why, the dies on the newer Lincoln cents seem to start their signs of deterioration at the word UNITED.

BJ Neff

[BIM Mania]

Hello BJ - Wow, well that is interesting.

I am familiar with all kinds of die deterioration, but this does not look like any I know of, or have encountered. (I haven't spent a great deal of time until recently looking at the reverse face of copper plated Lincoln's either).

The ones similar to these at the bottom of the steps are about 110 degrees off-set, but they are much thicker.

Huh.

OK then, I guess I will keep looking :o

Thanks,

Jeff

[wavysteps]

Jeff - if those lines at the bottom of the steps are parallel to each other, then they maybe trails.

The one thing to remember is that the motion of the die against the hub creates these lines, so therefore, they must be parallel to each other except in very rare instances. Even in those cases, there are groups of trails that are parallel to each other.

The lines that you showed from the tops of UNITED are most often mistaken for trails and at first, there was some thought that trails was actually a form of die deterioration because of the similarity. However, that idea was soon laid to rest when dies were found in an EDS that had trails/wavy steps.

BJ

[BIM Mania]

BJ - Thank you,

Your a wealth of information.

Jeff

[3¢nicker]

i would say it looks like die deterioration, but they can be tricky to take pics of one thing i would figure out is if those "trails" you have are really raised from the field, like a mountain range. To me trails i've seen first hand look like they pull the letters, you may just find that it's only metal flow