2004P Bar Behind Hand

[murphy]

Found this today.
BJ thinks it may be significant because it proves the bar is caused by a minor striking of the working die, then the operator backed off and struck it again with full force to complete the production af that die.
BJ's explaination sounds good, but on closer examination it looks like Lincoln's hand is a little out of place. Could it be another hand? And could that be another knee between his knees? I dunno what to make of all this.

I did something different taking these pics. I put a magnifying glass between the microscope and the penny to get about 30% more magnification.

[bruce 1947]

HI MURPHY
What year and mint is it looks very nice.

[bruce 1947]

Sorry Murphy I CAN SEE IT IS A 2004-P JUST DID NOT SEE IT THE FIRST TIME.

[wavysteps2003]

This is another 2004 with a hand over an extra column that is different than the one that Murph has shown. As Murph said, I do maintain that we are looking at a double hubbing in these cases and these two examples are fairly solid proof of what is happening.

What I believe is occurring is that when the die is in the first stages of being made, an offset occurs between the hub face to the die face. When the hub press operator notices this offset, he/she backs off the hub, re-sets it and then continues with the operation. If contact was made during the initial downward movement of the hub to the die, that portion of the hubbing will be left on the die. In this case it was an extra sixth column that was offset to the east. After the hub / die offset was corrected, the hub again made contact with the die and superimposed the left hand of Lincoln on the errant column.

[img]


In the picture above, you can see the large extra sixth column (indicated by the green arrows). There is an actual break in this column (indicated by the red arrows) caused by the placement of Lincoln's left hand. This is a great indicator that the errant column was placed on the die first, followed then by Lincon's hand.

Of course, if the offset between the hub to die faces is not corrected, we see what is called a "snap back" doubled die where the offset is corrected through pressure early on in the hubbing process. This has been mostly seen on the obverse dies, however, I have seen some indications that this happens on the reverse dies as well, especially when the errant columns appear somewhat curved. There is one other situation that I believe happens and that is a hub / die offset correction that happens near the end of the hubbing process. The jury is still out on that one.

You all have a good one and keep on searching.

WAVYSTEPS2003