1950 Lincoln Wheat Cent Mint Error - Double Struck Both Strikes Off Center

That is a very cool one!

A beauty! Isn't that known as a saddle strike?

Very Nice!

Don't see these every day...cool!

Thanks all! It's just different enough that it really caught my eye when I saw it. It's both the way the coins are aligned plus so often when both strikes are off center neither is near the 50% off zone.

I suspect this is a saddle strike. The gap between the two off-center strikes seems to match those of other early cent saddle strikes. The face-to-back orientation is also seen in some early saddle strikes. The unstruck interval between the two strikes seems slightly convex on the obverse and slightly concave on the reverse. The only discrepancy is the narrow slide zone on the larger strike. Saddle strikes usually lack a slide zone (although there are exceptions). On balance, this would seem to be a saddle strike. The earliest cent saddle strike I know of is from 1949.

Yes, Dearborn, the press would have had two adjacent die pairs operating in synchrony. If one of the die pairs strikes the planchet a micro-second before the other die pair, then you will see a slide zone develop. The smaller strike lacks a slide zone, suggesting that this impact was ever-so-slightly delayed relative to the larger strike.