1993 Floating Die Clash FDC-1C-1993-01

Description

Discovered by Bob Mohan, FDC-1c-1993-01 was — at the time of its cataloging — the most recently discovered floating die clash in the Lincoln cent series. A floating die clash is one of the rarest and most mechanically complex die errors in U.S. coinage: it occurs when a fragment of one die breaks away, becomes trapped between the die pair, and is struck by the opposing die, transferring design elements from the fragment onto the other die's working face in incuse form. In this case, a large fragment broke away from the reverse die of a 1993 Philadelphia cent, and the fragment's working face was subsequently struck by the obverse die. This transferred a large, incuse letter "E" — originating from either the word ONE or CENT on the reverse design — onto the obverse die face, where it appears in the field between and surrounding the letters IN of IN GOD WE TRUST. Additional erratic die damage from the fragment's contact is visible above the incuse letter. The variety is cross-referenced to a known cud documented in The CUD Book Supplement (Margolis and Thurman, 2001) as LC-93-2R and in the Cuds on Coins catalog as CU-1c-1993-01, establishing that the same reverse die that produced the floating die clash also generated a cataloged cud — the two errors are mechanically related, both resulting from the same die fragmentation event. This cross-referencing between error types makes FDC-1c-1993-01 a particularly well-documented case study in how a single die failure can produce multiple collectible varieties.

External References