1993 (D) Washington Quarter - CU-25c-1993D-04 Rim Cud

Description

Fourth documented rim cud for the 1993 Denver Mint Washington Quarter, this variety records another instance of major die rim failure in a year that evidently produced notable die breakage at both the Philadelphia and Denver facilities. The Cuds on Coins catalog designates this as CU-25c-1993D-04, following the systematic naming convention that tracks each unique cud by denomination, date, mint, and sequence. A rim cud represents the loss of part of the die's rim gutter: on the coin it appears as a raised interruption in the design rim that tracks the rim's course. The size and position of each cud depends on the stretch of rim gutter that was lost, and the four documented Denver Mint cuds for 1993 represent four separate die failures on four different dies. Denver struck approximately 645.5 million Washington Quarters in 1993 using the John Flanagan clad design, a massive production run that consumed numerous die pairs throughout the year. High-speed coining presses operating at hundreds of strikes per minute subject die rims to cumulative fatigue stress, and the rim — where the die's flat field transitions to the raised collar channel — represents a geometric stress concentration that predisposes that zone to fracture. Four rim cuds from a single year and mint indicates that multiple dies reached the end of their serviceable life in a manner that produced collectible error coins before the dies were retired from the press.

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