2 cent, 1865

[katydid-migration]

Hi,

I posted about this coin before. A 2 cent 1865 ,Civil War era coin. The lettering is a bit worn, but legible enough to know it's the less rare 'large motto'. (natch)

But was wondering about a little glitch on the left side of the reverse side of the coin. It looks like a peice of metal got folded over and was slightly imprinted with the die, with some of the letters of 'united'. Is there a technical term for this?

[katydid-migration]

Hi,

Me again. I posted a scan as an attachment. (Didn't know how it'd work-thought it'd come up on the actual post..) But just to say, the black spot in the middle and the white spot higher up are just shmutz from the scan.

 

Another question. In handling coins, does the natural oils of the skin have any long term effects on a coin?

 

Thank you, guys,

Shell

[Bruceswar]

 

I think this looks like what they call lamination or missing metal or a missing partial layer..

[Hoot]

As Bruce said, it's a lamination error. This is where impurities in the metal caused a poor alloy mix and a piece of the metal came off. Not all lamination errors are missing metal and the laminated piece remains with the rest of the coin. These are nearly always long and linear due to how the metal was rolled out before punching the blanks for the planchets.

 

I think that your hoto gave us beans here because it's a bmp (bitmap) file. jpg files work better on these boards. Here it is:

 

 

Hoot