CU-1C-1987-11 Cud

Description

The eleventh cud variety in the 1987 Lincoln Memorial cent census, CU-1C-1987-11 pushes the documented count into territory that underscores the production intensity of this vintage. With over a dozen cud varieties cataloged for a single date-mint combination, the 1987 Philadelphia cent serves as a case study in how extreme mintage volumes correlate with die failure frequency. The Philadelphia Mint operated multiple high-speed presses throughout the year, each consuming dies at a rate determined by striking pressure, planchet hardness, and the complexity of the design being impressed. When a die fractured at the rim, the press operator or automated inspection system ideally detected the resulting defective coins and pulled the die — but in a facility running at peak capacity, response times varied, and some broken dies remained in service long enough to produce quantities of cud coins that eventually reached circulation. The systematic recovery of these varieties by error specialists and their subsequent cataloging by Cuds on Coins creates a permanent record of die performance under industrial conditions. For numismatic researchers, each cataloged cud is a data point in the broader study of die life, die steel metallurgy, and the mechanical limits of the coining process. Struck at Philadelphia on copper-plated zinc planchets (97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper) at 2.5 grams and 19mm, from the 1987 mintage of 4,682,466,931 cents.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Stacy Hall
• CU-1C-1987-11
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References