CoinWeek article on damaged source coins (for use in creating counterfeit dies) is this “mystery”
1872-S half dollar. Many of our documented source and counterfeit examples were discovered in one of the large internet sales venues, and watching sellers associated with them in the past has led to new discoveries. Many of these sellers are actually interconnected, buying and selling among each other, and the list continues to grow. The subject example for this article came from reviewing the offerings of one of these sellers; the “coin” was suspicious by association as a result and warranted additional research and investigation in my opinion, but was beyond my experience and focus of