Hey, I don't know whether somebody can help me or not but I just received
>the damnedest looking Lincoln wheat cent in the mail from a friend of mine
>in Kentucky: dealers might see these things come and go all the time but
>I'm not used to it- a 1934 penny fully struck but with partial design
>elements from the back pressed into the front and some belonging to the
>front on the back. Partial wheat ears surround Lincoln's profile, the
>phrase INI (part of UNITED) is clearly visible upside down across his
>forehead, parts of the letter E and the letter T from ONE CENT, again
>upside down, are on his coat front and shoulder, parts of the letters U and
>M from UNUM are on the bottom of the bust and the lower half of the rim is
>flattened and distorted in places. And this is only on the obverse! On the
>back the date is repeated diagonally and upside down running from the upper
>corner of where the N ought to be in ONE except that letter is almost
>completely missing up to the R in PLURIBUS
>, which has the 4 touching it, and the first numeral of the date on this side is only half as long as it should be. Parts of Lincoln's profile, correct in
>relation to the misplaced date but almost upside down and running
>diagonally in relation to the reverse strike, are visible over much of E CENT, with the lower part of his
>back stamped over the upper part of the right wheat ear and the back of his
>head running like a big die crack down through UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and
>curving up into the stem of the left wheat ear. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST
>is repeated faintly but unmistakably upside down near the rim down between
>the stems of the wheat ears ending with part of the word TRUST stamped into
>the outer edge of the left wheat ear, and the upper part of the rim is
>flattened over the upper half of E PLURIBUS UNUM. There's a small cud on the rim of the reverse and I'd guess without knowing
>too much about the striking process that the coin was stamped and then
>somehow flipped over and rotated and stamped again on the opposite sides but I can't figure out how that would happen.
>
>
>It's the most unusual Lincoln wheat cent I ever saw and I looked at a lot
>of them when I was a kid. One of my questions is "are there any more of that date out there?" It looks like an ordinary penny until you look at it closely. Then you start picking up feature after feature that isn't where it's supposed to be. I haven't used this site before so had to get advice just to post this query; am going to try to put some big images I took of it with a scanner into the Gallery section. Any and all help in determining how it ended up looking like this and putting some kind of a ballpark monetary valuation on it would be appreciated. I can email the images, although they're large files.

Best regards,

Mike Orford
Juneau, Alaska

Hey mike....sounds like a vice job to me.....but without pictures you can't be sure.... If the letters go into the coin then it is post mint damage where someone stacked 3 coins on top of each other and squished them between a vice to transfer the images from one coin to another....this sounds like it was the middle coin...I see these quite often and they have no addituional value...but like i said without pictures I can't be %100

Could this be the result of a die clash?

< Could this be the result of a die clash?>

Highly unlikely. From his description it sounds like way to much of the designs form the other side are visible, plus there are design features from one side visible ON the devices of the other side. In a die clash the outlines of the design features are transfered to the other die by the fields of the die. How does the field of one die reach the bottom of the sunken devices of the other die?

He also says "partial design elements from the back pressed into the front". Note the word INTO. Now there are only two ways the design could be struck INTO another coin. One is the squeeze in a vice job, and the other is to be struck by an early stage capped die. But his coin is like that on both sides which would mean it was struck between TWO early stage capped dies. And the only way that could happen is so preposturous that we can pretty much dismiss it out of hand. (The procedure would be: Strike a normal coin. This coin gets stuck to the obverse die. Then two previously struck cents, both heads up, would have to enter into the coining chamber at the same time and ten be struck again. I'm not sure you can FIT three cents into that space, and even if you can the middle cent will not be completely restrained by the collar and show either a partial collar strike or a "railroad rim".

Since the double early capped die strike is therefore a dead issue, it sure sounds like a sqeeze job.

Wow!

Great information. Thanks Conder

-Bobby

I saw the picture of the reverse and the details are not pressed into the reverse,, they stand out,,, meaning it looks like an "innie" vs. an "outie" die (or object) created the details. The file size is about 1.3M, and I tried to load the pic into my gallery but got a 'can't load this file type' error. I lost the obv pic that Mike sent me, but if the details on the obv are also raised (outie's), then how could that have been created, unless by a die of some type?

Mike, do the secondary details on the cents reverse and obverse align? If yes, the question to group is worth repeating.

Has anyone see one like it before, how was it created (ie-flipped in the die and then hit again?),,, and what's she worth in AU+ condition?