CU-1C-1979-05 Cud

Description

Fifth in the Cuds on Coins census for the 1979 Philadelphia Lincoln Memorial cent, CU-1C-1979-05 records another terminal rim failure from the final year of unmintmarked Philadelphia cent production. With five documented cuds, the 1979-P date demonstrates a pattern consistent with other high-mintage Philadelphia issues from this era: enough dies were consumed during the production campaign to generate a meaningful number of observable failures, and enough coins from damaged dies survived into collector hands to enable documentation. The cud formation sequence is well understood metallurgically — hardened die steel under cyclic compressive loading accumulates dislocation damage at the atomic level, particularly at geometric discontinuities where stress concentrations exist. The die rim, with its abrupt cross-sectional transition, provides the ideal nucleation site for fatigue cracks. Once initiated, these cracks grow incrementally with each press cycle until reaching a critical length that allows rapid, unstable propagation and fragment detachment. CU-1C-1979-05 represents one such terminal event, frozen in the numismatic record through the coins produced between the moment of fragment separation and the die's removal from service. The specific rim position of this break distinguishes it from all other entries in the 1979 Philadelphia cud catalog. Attribution by Cuds on Coins.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Acracer on ebay
• CU-1C-1979-05
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References