1987 2c Struck Through oil
The above coin (of which there are 2 -consecutive pair so to speak!) was taken from a 1987 mint roll and shows lovely bright red cartwheel lustre. It clearly shows an error of some sort on the date, but what is it? You could guess that it was struck over a faulty planchet but it has in fact been struck with excess grease or oil on the die. This has left a fuzzy date (compare this with clarity in the rest of the legends) and an area surrounding the date with an indentation made from this grease material left on the surface of the die. This impression would have been left on the obverse of all the coins struck by this die at this time until the grease wore, fell or was wiped away. It's interesting that 2 coins in a single mint roll were found with exactly the same effect.
We call this type of error a strike through or an oil-filled die. A strike-thru could be made from any sort of material invading the space between the die and the planchet at striking. It could be cotton, wire, oil, extra metal or any foreign object contaminating the strike.
Posted by harrisk at August 26, 2011 1:04 PM
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