1988 Penny with Bubble Under Mint D 0

[JahShuWah]

Hello, I'm new to coins and wanted to find out a What is it? Info? Grade? Identification? Value? On this 1988 penny I found. 

[Sandon]

   Welcome to the NGC chat board.

   The U.S. mint began striking cents on copper-plated zinc blanks during the latter part of 1982.  It took until the mid to late 1990s for the plating process to be perfected, with the result that many, if not most, of the pieces struck during the 1980s and early 1990s display what appear to be blisters, bubbles or other raised shapes through the plating layer. Knowledgeable collectors regard this as a quality control issue rather than a mint error, do not give these pieces a premium value and usually prefer pieces without these plating defects.

   Your 1988-D cent has About Uncirculated details with damage showing on the reverse. It is only worth its one cent face value. If you find the plating defect around the mint mark interesting, you are welcome to collect it. It is a large one!

[JahShuWah]

Great info, thank you!

[powermad5000]

I agree with @Sandon that there were many issues with the plating of the zinc core Lincoln cents for many years including this one. Basically, the issues began around 1982 and lasted into the late 90's and to a lesser extent the early 2000s. Your cent has an interesting bubble around the mint mark, which though, I am a little suspect of seeing the level of physical damage to the reverse of the cent. It is possible that someone was attempting to try to create the effect of an error as the mintmark to me looks distorted. If the plating bubbled under the mintmark naturally, I would think it would just lift the mintmark up with the plating but not change its shape. I could be wrong about this, but something looks a little off to me like maybe heat was purposely applied to the spot around the mintmark to get it to bubble up. People sometimes do strange things to coins.

[EagleRJO]

 

On 9/9/2023 at 12:46 AM, powermad5000 said:

I am a little suspect of seeing the level of physical damage to the reverse of the cent. It is possible that someone was attempting to try to create the effect of an error as the mintmark to me looks distorted.

I don't know if it's intentional since looking at the Obv and Rev side by side doesn't seem to show any opposite side damage around where the mint mark is, even with a slightly rotated die (see attached).

Looks to me like a plating bubble or blister error around the mint mark, although a minor one without any added collector value.  It's still an interesting find though that the op may want to hang onto if they collect cents.

https://www.error-ref.com/blisteredplating/#:~:text=Plating blisters Definition%3A This error type occurs only,as are contaminants within or under the plating.