"Not sure what to make of it so if anyone has some input I would be grateful."
I take you at your word. Please forgive my rant.
I believe there ought to be CCF forum dedicated to the 1955
Lincoln Wheat cent alone. I've found nothing comparable to this mongrel elsewhere in numismatics. Your example reinforces my passion on the matter.
My main project for the last three years has been to wrap my mind around the unfamiliar coin collections I purchased and stored in the 1970's. That tedium required me to break the task down to sub-projects. This week's project has been to closely examine my large collection of
LWC's dated 1955. My 1955P-1DR-001 has been slabbed by NGC. Still, I have many hundreds, raw. These were once carefully culled from circulation, bank rolls, cigarette packs, and who knows where else by a savvy, long gone, collector. Ed sold to me in order to fund some enjoyment during his final years. My enjoyment in the era was solely to enjoy helping Ed on his mission. We'd been close for many years. Hence the storage cycle.
After placing my 400th '55 under my microscope, I can feel the tension at the Philadelphia mint that year. Pandemonium allowed my
DDO to escape. Ed explained to me that that a
Two Cent tax was added to a pack of cigarettes. Smokers (most of the U.S. adult population in that age) would put silver and nickel into vending machines which dispensed a pack of butts and
Three Cents in change. The result was mint state panic due to a critical shortage of copper coins for use in other purchases. Absent panic, the infamous
DDO would never have escaped. Panic, it seems, sired less dramatic, but only slightly less, coinage (as imaged above).
Your 1955
LWC and most of mine attest to the panic period. The mint had to produce coins at all costs round-the-clock. Every working die had to be worked to death. The labor force was strained to the limit. From what I've seen, this generated a plethora of 1955 P wheat cents worthy of the most inept third world mint director. The so-called Poor Man's Doubled Die serves an example. Those dies should have been pensioned off long since. Coins anything at all like yours had never before made it past the walls of the Philadelphia Mint; lesson learned, they never will again.
Judging by what I see on the surfaces of my '55's, there's much fascination to be enjoyed if others were to look for new sins of the '55 mint and post them in a forum for CCF members and visitors to enjoy. I opine that gems (like yours) suffer sad and unwarranted obscurity, lost in the dark shadow of 1955P-1DR-001.
Kevin
Posted 12/22/2020 8:03 pm
