Grease/Droped Letters~Education please!

[lara4228]

From reading here and elsewhere, I understand there are times when grease gets in the way and causes a 'smeared' effect on a coin.

So, if grease gets onto the die it will appear in a MM as a blob, on the legend it will appear as though the lettering is smoothly vanished, well the better part of the letters, as in STATES, only the STA you can read only the bottom portions.

I hope I'm getting this right.

Now, dropped letters, I think it was Aisha who posted here the yesterday or the other night about a dropped letter. I didn't see it or understand it.

I've kind of understand pics I've seen with the MM being dropped. It that due to grease also? What kind of mark does it leave on the face of the coin?

Is this "greasing" on the reverse not happen simutaneously on the obverse as well?

What about Doubling? ahh, I'll that question for another post...maybe this weekend. That's another question I have...later.

Thanks for all the info, in advance.

Lara

[jcuve]

Seems the grease is rather viscous and tends to mix with dirt and metal debris. Different orientations produce different results. When roll searching the same date in a BU roll, one can sometimes find little strike throughs on a number of coins in a similar spot; going through them you can see how the grease migrates in ever so slightly different directions per strike. When the design disappears completely, I have been told, the idea is it is rather thick and somewhat stable.

The whole dropped letter thing is when a filled die looses a hardened portion and is literally struck into the coin causing a incuse version of the design where the grease originated from. It is a one time event. I have one example with a small amount of retained grease in the dropped letter (I purchased this example from Mike D.). I have yet to shoot it or I wold post pictures. (Beware of fakes on eBay.)