CU-1C-1974D-04 Cud

Description

Assigned catalog number CU-1C-1974D-04 by the Cuds on Coins team, this variety is the fourth documented cud for the 1974 Denver Mint Lincoln Memorial cent. The absence of an "R" suffix indicates an obverse die rim break, placing the cud on the portrait side of the coin. Rim cuds develop through a fatigue-driven fracture mechanism: the die rim, which defines the outermost boundary of the coin's design and interfaces with the collar, experiences concentrated mechanical stress at points where design elements such as lettering, denticles, or portrait features intersect the rim. Over hundreds of thousands of striking cycles, microscopic fatigue cracks nucleate at these stress concentration points and propagate outward until a segment of die steel separates completely. The location of CU-1C-1974D-04 on the coin's circumference identifies the stress concentration point where the fracture initiated on this particular obverse die. Collectors attributing a specimen to CU-1C-1974D-04 should verify that the cud's angular position, arc-length, and the specific design elements it obliterates match the published reference documentation, as the thirteen 1974-D cud varieties span the full circumference and some may be positionally proximate. The massive scale of Denver's 1974 cent production — approximately 4.24 billion coins struck from hundreds of individual die pairs — created the conditions for an unusually large population of cud-producing die failures. Each failed die may have produced thousands of cud-bearing coins before quality control detected the damage and removed the die from service, creating a collectible population distributed through normal circulation channels.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Charity & Chris Welch
• CU-1C-1974D-04
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References