PART VI. Striking Errors:

Struck Through Errors:

Struck Through a Die Cap:

Struck Through a Split or Torn Die Cap

Definition: As the floor of a late-stage die cap gets increasingly thin, it can develop tears or can split like the skin of an overripe tomato.  The result is a coin with part of the design blurred (a ghost image) and part of the design unobstructed.  Tears can also develop in the wall of a cap.

Shown below is a 1983-? quarter dollar struck through a dislodged, laterally-shifted, torn die cap.  After falling off the obverse die, the cap moved northward.  At some point a triangular tear developed in the wall of the cap.  The formerly vertical wall was flattened by the strike and simultaneously generated a semicircular “zone of collapse” on the obverse face of the coin.  A triangle of weakly-struck die-struck design protrudes through the gap.  The reverse face is featureless and puckered.  This is one type of “extrusion strike“.