I've looked and looked but I'm darned if I can find a reference to die clogs/errors for this coin. Anyone who knows of similar examples please share. I can send larger images to anyone who is interested.

What I'm seeing is smooshed corn on the left side, top and bottom of "H" connected, and seriously chopped up "F". Opinions, please.
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Here's the front:
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Here is an 1873 from my collection. The top and bottom of "H" is connected - that might be the norm. The chopped 'F' and smooshed corn on your piece may be after mintage damage - not certain though.

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Here's the best close-up I could get with my aging camera. It looks like a die error, and there's also an issue middle right of the "M". I'll post the smooshed area in a minute.

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Here's the "smooshed" area. Notice how the surrounding surface doesn't share the same characteristics. If this were simple wear it wouldn't be so concentrated in such a small area.

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Man I was so obscessed with the "F" I didn't even notice the errors on the obverse.

If you open my obverse photo above, you can see that the "D" in UNITED and the "R" in AMERICA BOTH have open tops. There's also a decent die crack, and the first A in "AMERICA" is nearly filled in.

Here's detail shots:

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yeh I see what you mean - maybe the die got filled in places?

It was the last year for this coin, and this was probably very late in the final run, die cracks and gunk and serious quality-control issues. But my original question remains - are there many of these messed-up versions out there ?

I don't collect that series but I wouldn't be suprised to find that such errors occur in a large percentage of the coins.

the top of the "F" is an old smoosh...but the letters around the outside are from die wear..they used those dies up...