CU-1C-1970S-01 Cud

Description

First in the cuds-on-coins catalog for the 1970-S Lincoln Memorial cent, CU-1C-1970S-01 documents a major die break on a Large Date business strike. A cud forms when a section of a working die fractures and separates at or near the rim, leaving a void in the die face that produces a corresponding raised, featureless mass of metal on every coin struck from the damaged die. The 1970-S date's San Francisco production involved both business-strike and proof dies, with the business strikes further subdivided into Large Date and Small Date hub varieties — a distinction that matters for cud attribution because each hub variety represents a separate die population with its own failure history. CU-1C-1970S-01's position as the first cataloged cud for this date and mintmark establishes the baseline of the die break record, with subsequent entries building a portrait of how many distinct die failures occurred across the 1970-S business-strike production run. Each cud's unique profile — determined by its angular position along the rim, the depth of penetration into the design, and the shape of the fractured edge — serves as a fingerprint linking every affected coin back to a single parent die. Collectors value cuds for their dramatic visual impact: unlike doubled dies or repunched mintmarks that require magnification to appreciate, a well-developed cud is immediately visible as an irregular raised blob disrupting the coin's normal rim and design elements.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Fred Weinberg
• CU-1C-1970S-01
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References