Why Words Slide Into the Rim: A Closer Look at This Common PMD
Another 1968-D cent showing the same pushed-in rim distortion. The flattened motto and spread lettering are caused by a clamp or vise after minting.
Every collector runs into this sooner or later. You flip a coin under the scope and notice something weird. The letters at the edge look like they’re sliding uphill into the rim. “IN GOD WE TRUST” is creeping upward. LIBERTY looks pinched. The date looks squeezed. It feels dramatic enough that a lot of people convince themselves they’ve found a mint error.
The truth is way less exciting, but way more useful for your long-term eye. This is one of the most common forms of post mint damage. A coin takes a hit from the side, the metal shifts, and the raised details get pushed toward the rim. Nothing inside the Mint created it. It’s all regular life out in the wild.
Collectors call this stuff PMD. If you’re brand new and wondering what that actually means, check out my walkthrough on PMD coin meaning and how to sort real mint errors from damage.
Once you understand what’s happening to the metal, these jump out instantly. They aren’t worth anything, but they’re great training material because they force you to slow down and read how metal behaves under pressure. Coins take hits, they deform, and the details migrate. This is exactly what that looks like.
Why This Happens: What Side Impacts Do to a Coin
1968 cent with lettering pushed into the rim from pressure damage. This is a classic example of PMD that can look dramatic but has no collectible premium.
When a coin takes a hit from the side, the metal reacts the same way soft copper or zinc always reacts. It moves. It stretches, folds, or shifts depending on where the force makes contact. None of that motion is random. The highest points on the coin get shoved first, and the rim acts like a barrier the metal gets pushed into.
On a Memorial cent, the design elements near the edge sit on raised “shoulders” created during the strike. These shoulders are strong, but they’re not stronger than whatever slammed into the coin after it left the Mint. A hard impact pushes the nearest raised details sideways. Since the rim sits higher than the fields, the letters smear, creep, or slide upward into that outer ring.
It isn’t flattening and it isn’t striking pressure. It’s simple displacement. The metal was here. Now it’s there.
A few things show up over and over:
• Letters look stretched or pulled upward.
The base of the letter stays where it started, but the top gets dragged toward the rim.
• The rim swells or thickens at the impact point.
This is one of the easiest tells. The rim looks “inflated” or wider than the rest of the coin.
• The fields nearby look warped or disturbed.
The texture changes. The surface flow looks different from the untouched parts of the coin.
• The deformation is directional.
Mint-made errors tend to follow the flow of the strike. Damage follows the force of the hit. That difference is huge.
The key thing is this: the Mint is incredibly consistent. When you see letters bending upward at different angles or widths, that’s chaos created by an impact, not a die. Once you train your eye to recognize that inconsistency, you spot this kind of PMD on sight—even at a glance.
How to Rule Out Mint Errors in Seconds
You do not need to be a die variety specialist to figure this one out. You just need a quick checklist and the willingness to be honest about what you see.
Start with these questions:
1. Does the distortion follow the design or fight it?
Mint errors that affect the whole coin, like off-center strikes or broadstrikes, push everything in a consistent direction. With words in the rim PMD, only a small area is affected and the letters bend in ways that do not match the rest of the design. If LIBERTY is smashed upward but the date and motto look normal, that is post-mint damage.
2. Is there impact evidence where the letters are bent?
Look for a flat spot, scrape, bruise, or shiny contact mark on the rim or just inside it. That is usually the exact point where another coin, a machine part, or some other hard surface hit. Errors caused by the dies will not leave a single clean “bruise” like that.
3. Do the letters change thickness or shape?
A real doubled die keeps the original letter shape. You see separation, not smearing. With PMD, parts of the letter get thinned out, widened, or twisted. The base might be thick while the top is stretched and ragged. That is metal being shoved around after the strike.
4. Is the rim itself warped or swollen?
If the rim bulges, flattens, or looks “melted” into the design, you are looking at damage. Mint errors that involve the rim, like certain off-center strikes, change the whole coin, not a tiny wedge around a couple of letters.
5. Does it match any known variety?
When in doubt, compare your coin to trusted references. If you have to strain to convince yourself it looks “kind of close” to something on a variety site, it probably is not a mint error. Known varieties are documented and repeatable. Random side impacts are not.
If you walk through those steps and everything points to a hit, you can safely call it what it is: post-mint damage.
The Bottom Line
Words pushed into the rim look dramatic, but they’re one of the most common forms of post-mint damage you’ll ever see. The mint did not make this. A machine, another coin, or something with enough force hit that edge and shoved metal sideways. Once you know the signs, you can spot this stuff instantly and move on.
Geoff runs Genuine Cents, a straight talking coin education project built from hands-on experience and hundreds of hours examining coins. He is an ANA member and writes practical guides for new and returning collectors who want clarity instead of hype. If you want to reach him, message him on Instagram at @GenuineCents.
