Part VI. Striking Errors:

Ejection doubling

Definition: A form of widely offset, raised doubling that appears on the face struck by the anvil die.

The term “ejection doubling” was traditionally applied to minor smearing of the design generated by the anvil die. The idea was that the newly-struck coin resisted being pushed off the anvil die face by the ejector, causing the raised design elements to catch on the edges of the die’s recesses.

Since traditional ejection doubling is indistinguishable from minor slide doubling (a form of machine doubling), it was retired from use. Slide doubling results from lateral movement of either die at their moment of closest approximation or just as the hammer die is lifting off the surface of the coin.

In 2022, ejection doubling was resurrected and applied to widely offset raised doubling that is not smeared and that appears on the face struck by the anvil die. The distance between primary and secondary design elements is too great to represent push doubling (another form of machine doubling) because the amount of play available between anvil die and collar is insufficient.

James Hitchcock discovered the 2008-P 5-cent “type specimen” that has been used to define this new form of doubling to which the old moniker “ejection doubling” has been applied.

The doubling appears on the obverse face, which was struck by the anvil die. A secondary, right-positioned eye is located 0.5 millimeters below the normal eye. The primary eye also shows close doubling that would have been classified as push doubling had the more distant eye not been present.

The gap between the primary eye and the distant secondary eye is too great to be explained by the recoil and lateral shift of the anvil die within a fixed collar. There are at least two possible explanations:

1. It’s possible that, once the coin was pushed up out of the collar, both the anvil die and the collar shifted southward at the same time that the anvil die was recoiling from, and returning to, the coin’s reverse face. Delayed retraction of the hammer die may have been necessary to maintain resistance to the impact of the anvil die.
2. The newly-struck coin adhered to the hammer die face and was carried along as the hammer die bounced upward, shifted laterally, and sank downward again. This allowed the lower face of the coin to make light, secondary contact with the anvil die. This scenario requires the coin to be free of the collar’s embrace but does not require movement of the anvil die or collar.