Having Fun with Mint Marks, the 1925 D Lincoln Wheat Cent
The process of creating the mint mark
for US coins is far different today than it used to be. Up
until 1990, all dies were made at the main U.S. Mint
facility in Philadelphia. In the early years of production
at the branch mints in San Francisco and Denver, dies were
shipped from Philadelphia to the branch mints as they were
needed. Before shipping them, a worker at the Philadelphia
mint would use a tap and die set to punch a letter under the
date to indicate where the die would be shipped.
As you might guess, hand punching a die is prone to
mistakes. And indeed, many “mistakes” were made which produced many different
varieties known as RPM’s or Re-Punched Mint Marks. This article though is
focused on not RPM’s but the differences that coins in the same year can have in
regards to the placement of the Mint Mark. Again, since this was a manual
process, the Mint Mark was not always put in the same place as we shall see.
Additionally, sometimes they are slanted.
If you look at Lincoln Cents with mint marks prior to 1990,
you may see differences in the locations. In this article we will examine the
1925 D Lincoln Cent. I looked at a couple hundred 1925 D Lincoln cents and came
up with 6 separate and distinct varieties. There may be more, but these are the
ones I came up with from my limited sample.
The first example looks like a typical mint mark. You can
see the mint mark is centered between the 9 and the 2 and does not look out of
place
The 2nd example is also centered between the 9
and the 2, but if you look closely, you can see the “D” is tilted counter
clockwise. It is not a significant tilt, but certainly is different from
example 1
The 3rd example has a mint mark that is no
longer centered and is more towards the 2. It is not terribly out of place
compared to example 1, but clearly is over a little bit.
The 4th example is a little different as well.
This example shows the mint mark under the two, a little tilted clockwise, not
much but the opposite tilt of example 2. Also, the mint mark is much lower than
the previous examples.
In example 5 we again have a slight tilt counter
clockwise. If you compare to the previous couple examples, you can tell the
mint mark is shifted a little close to the center of the 9 and 2, but still
clearly more under the 2 than the 9
Example 6 shows a mint mark that more under the 9 than the
2. This is different than all previous examples. It is also tilted counter
clockwise and is a fair distance from the 2 and is lower than the other mint
marks.
While each of these examples do not necessarily carry any
additional premium, they are interesting to note and can add additional variety
to your collection.
Keith Scott has been a collector for over 30 years. His website has
US coins for sale. He also writes
Coin Collecting Articles for fun. Visit his websites for a history of US coins,
metal market updates and news about your favorite coins.
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