CU-1C-1952D-03 Cud

Description

Skipping past the -02 position in this batch, CU-1C-1952D-03 presents the third documented cud variety for the 1952 Denver Wheat Cent. The gap in sequence is simply a matter of batch composition — the full Cuds on Coins catalog contains additional entries not included here. What this variety shares with every cud is its origin story: somewhere along the rim of a hardened steel die, a crack that may have started as an invisible subsurface flaw propagated outward under repeated striking until a wedge of metal separated from the die face. The resulting cavity impressed itself onto every planchet fed into the press, producing coins with a characteristic raised blank area bounded by the original rim contour on one side and the fracture edge on the other. The visual effect can range from a small bump barely interrupting a single letter to a dramatic swath consuming an entire quadrant of the design. For the 1952-D date, three other documented cuds suggest the Denver facility's die consumption rate was high enough to regularly encounter late-die-state failures — an expected outcome when production schedules prioritize throughput over die conservation.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Dixie3737 on ebay
• CU-1C-1952D-03
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References