CU-25c-1994P-03 Rim Cud

Description

Third in the Cuds on Coins catalog for the 1994-P Washington Quarter, this rim cud documents a major die break where a section of the working die fractured at the rim, creating a raised featureless blob of metal at the edge of the struck coin. The "03" designation indicates that at least two other cuds had already been cataloged for the 1994-P quarter before this one was submitted, establishing a small but notable population of rim break varieties for this date-mint combination. The entry was cataloged on July 22, 2018, with no additional cross-references known. Rim cuds form through mechanical fatigue: the repeated impact of striking operations concentrates stress at the die's edge, where the transition between the relief cavity and the collar creates a geometric stress riser. Over thousands or tens of thousands of strikes, microscopic cracks propagate through the die steel until a section separates, and subsequent strikes force planchet metal into the resulting void, producing the characteristic smooth, raised mass at the coin's rim. The 1994-P Washington Quarter was struck at the Philadelphia Mint in copper-nickel clad composition (5.67 grams, 24.3 mm diameter) as part of the standard annual production of John Flanagan's original Washington Quarter design, which had been in continuous use since 1932. With Philadelphia's high-volume 1990s quarter production requiring hundreds of working dies annually, the statistical occurrence of rim fractures across the die population yielded multiple cataloged cuds for this date.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Chuck Newman
• Cross reference number: none. 07/22/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References