1956 Bow Tie Error

[jstraw13]

What would you say this would be?

[coop]

Beings it raises from the coin I would say die alteration. If you look closely to my image you can see where a letter is near the bow tie. Looks like that area was affected by a clash and a sever cleaning was done to try to eliminate the clash.

[jstraw13]

Thanks, coop. My thoughts were it could be a die chip.

[coop]

That was my first thought. But there is no die crack in that area. Also die cracks are not semi straight. With a crack they look like a soft cookie when you bend them. There isn't a straight line, but uneven line where the crack happens. So I went to the image of the clash and saw the correlation.

[Dick]

Coop, I thought it might be a clash, but when i checked, it didn't come out clear enough to decide, so I waited uintil you commented. I didn't see any letter close to the bowtie.
Dick

[coop]

The top of the N on CENT. Probably other areas may be affected, but to the person who cleaned/polished that die, that was the strongest and got his attention.

[mikediamond]

It looks like a die chip to me. I've seen die chips in this area on other Lincoln cents.

[jstraw13]

Here is another. This seems more like a die chip. The first looks more like it might be a large die crack.