Key Dates

Dimes I aint gonna be much help but silver roosies are all keepers and the 96W would have to be the key to the clad issue

and for cents 70S small date and the 60P small date might be considered key dates more like key varities

I have never used it, but I think the CherryPickers Guide has lists
Some else should have more info. What I can remember for LMC: 1960 small and large dates, 1970 small and large dates, there are some 1995 DDO (if I have the year correct)

I can not for the life of me remember who posted this, nor can I find the threads. But this member had a great system for sorting out the key dates. This is the original post that I copied for reference...

My little project for the day. This may have been done before, but I'd like to present my findings. I looked at mintage figures for the Lincoln cents 1909-2010. I divided them into the two traditional groups: wheats (1909-1958), and modern (1959-2010). I am not including varieties such as 1955 DD, 1960 small date, etc., since these have no specific mintage figures.

I took the log (base 10) of the mintage figures and determined their statistical z-score. (The log value gave, in my opinion, more realistic z-score distributions than using the raw mintage figures.) The z-score is a measure that tells how many standard deviations it is above or below the mean. Key dates would have very negative scores. What I was trying to do is to see what z-scores are for the traditional key dates and then compare these values to the more modern cents.

Here are the results for the LWC:
1909 S VDB -3.07 key
1931 S -2.71 key
1914 D -2.51 key
1909 S -2.25 key
1924 D -2.05 semi-key
1911 S -1.76 semi-key
1914 S -1.74 semi-key
1912 S -1.70 semi-key
1931 D -1.70 semi-key
1926 S -1.69 semi-key
1915 S -1.65 semi-key
1910 S -1.51 semi-key
1913 S -1.50 semi-key

I used the definitions of key and semi-key from http://www.lincolncentresource.com/index.html

Using the cutoff value for a key date to be -2.2 or smaller and a semi-key between -2.2 and -1.5, I then determined the following for the modern cents and used this definition to label them as key or semi-key:

(1959-2010):
1968 S -3.12 key
1973 S -2.87 key
1972 S -2.65 key
1974 S -2.55 key
1971 S -2.24 key
1969 S -2.20 key
1960 -2.10 semi-key
1962 -2.06 semi-key
1959 -2.06 semi-key
1970 S -1.90 semi-key
1961 -1.79 semi-key
1963 -1.79 semi-key


It is interesting to note that WITHIN these groups, the 1968 S is comparable to the 1909 S VDB! You can make similar comparisons between the groups, such as the 1974 S is very comparable to the 1914 D.

I know this is a long read and there are many interpretations, but I thought this was interesting. I also felt is was important to have the two groups of data span about the same number of years. I also know there are other variables to consider to determine what is a key date.

Finally, there has been talk about how low mintage the 2009 cents have been. Here are the results of these:

2009 P -1.32
This compares best with:
1923 S -1.29


2009 D -1.17
This compares best with:
1932 D -1.17

Here's the 2009 breakdown:
2009 P4 -3.05
2009 D4 -2.63
2009 P1 -2.26
2009 P3 -2.16
2009 D3 -2.10
2009 D1 -2.05
2009 D2 -2.02
2009 P2 -1.98


He followed that with this for Jeffersons...


Here are the results for the 1938-1963 Jefferson nickels (sorted by z-value). I have listed the "top 10":

1950-D -2.49
1939-D -2.24
1938-S -2.10
1938-D -1.85
1939-S -1.67
1951-S -1.52
1955 -1.47
1949-S -1.32
1950 -1.31
1948-S -1.19

Generally, the top 5 have been considered to be "key dates", but in comparison to the Lincoln wheat cents, perhaps only the top 3 are "key dates" whereas the 1938-D, 1939-S, and the 1951-S should be considered as "semi-keys". Just my opinion.

Here's where it gets interesting. With the more modern nickels (1964-2009) here are the results (again the "top 10"):

2009-P -3.58
2009-D -3.34
1968-D -2.33
1968-S -2.14
1971 -2.09
1967 -2.08
1969-S -1.88
1965 -1.72
1966 -1.52
1975 -1.29

Let me reiterate this... THIS IS NOT MY WORK I am only posting what someone else did. Hopefully whoever this was will see this and I can make a note.

I think with moderns, there aren't really any keys for the most part, so the lowest minted coins become more or less the "keys" to the series. Maybe in a hundred years they will be real keys, but for right now not really.

I forgot which it was, but one of the non-silver 42 nickels is a tough one.
High value in unc condition for whatever reason. Circulated it is nothing special.

Oh and I agree on getting some modern keys in high grades at a relatively low price. Our grandchildren like smoke said will really be thankful.