CU-1C-1992-03 Cud

Description

Third of four cuds documented on 1992 Philadelphia Lincoln cents, CU-1C-1992-03 adds to a cud population that speaks to the demands placed on cent dies during one of the Mint's highest-volume production decades. The Philadelphia facility alone struck over 4.6 billion cents in 1992, and each die served for hundreds of thousands of impressions before retirement — a service life that inevitably produced fatigue fractures, some of which progressed to full cud formation. Collectors value cuds for their visual impact and their narrative quality: unlike subtle varieties that require magnification and expertise to identify, a cud is immediately visible to the naked eye as a conspicuous raised area that disrupts the coin's design. The size, shape, and position of a cud also make each one unique — no two die fractures follow identical paths through the steel, so every cud variety is a one-of-a-kind artifact of a specific die's failure history. In the marketplace, cud cents from the modern zinc era generally trade at modest premiums, though large cuds that obliterate significant portions of the design — a full letter, a date digit, or a section of Lincoln's portrait — can command substantially more. Struck at Philadelphia on copper-plated zinc planchets, 2.5 grams, 19mm, plain edge.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Steven Young
• CU-1C-1992-03
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References