1977 Lincoln Memorial Cent - CU-1C-1977-07 Cud

Description

CU-1C-1977-07 occupies the seventh position in the Cuds on Coins catalog. Rim breaks are the terminal stage of die deterioration — once the die has progressed past the phases of flow lines, die cracks, and retained interior breaks, the next step is the complete separation of a rim segment. This final failure mode produces the most visually striking results: a raised, amorphous mass of copper fills the void left by the missing die fragment, creating a coin that is immediately identifiable as an error even without magnification. This volume required an enormous throughput of die pairs, each of which had a finite service life determined by the hardness of the die steel, the striking pressure, and the ambient operating conditions of the press. When a die developed a rim crack that threatened to propagate into a full separation, press operators were responsible for detecting the defect and pulling the die — but in high-speed production, some damaged dies inevitably continued to run, releasing cuds into circulation. CU-1C-1977-07 documents one such instance. Attribution by Cuds on Coins.

Cross References

• CU-1C-1977-07

External References