1945 S mint wheat cents

[skeeter]

Going through some S mints, I had (4) 45 S's. each one had the S mark slightly shifted in different position. Not much but visible to the naked eye. (Can not do pictures that close up).

Probably different dies i would guess. Would this be a common variation for that time period ?

George

[Coinbuf]

Yes very common, this is directly from the book Looking Through Lincoln Cents by Charles Daughtrey.

 

"Repunched mintmarks saw a dramatic increase this year - over 40 different dies are known." He also notes that the San Francisco mint used two different mint mark styles that year.

[cpm9ball]

You have to remember that the mintmarks were hand-punched into the dies until the early 1990's. If you want to look at some really radical placements, just search through a bunch of Kennedy halves from the 1970's. The mintmarks were all over the place.

 

Re-punched mintmarks (RPM's) is an entirely different subject.

 

Chris

[skeeter]

Thanks for the input. This was the first time that I had looked at a bunch of wheat's at the same time. Don't do much with cents but aquired about a 1000 them with other coins. I'll see if I can find a collector when the batch is sorted.

George

[WoodenJefferson]

Wexler has a good article and a picture of a die sinker punching in the mint marks. Looks like there is a whole tray of working dies he's working on.

[skeeter]

Thanks for posting the Wexler article. Very informative, especially since I haven't done anything with cents. It would probably be fun to have a set up with hi- magnifcation to research the coins I have but not very productive,however interesting it may be.

George