Large Or Small Date?

large date...

Large Date. Take a look at your Red Book and compare the pictures. The Red Book tells you to look for a high 7 and a low 7, but I cant tell the difference. Anyhow, theres a better way to tell them apart at a quick glance. If you look at the 7 on a large date, you will notice that the horizontal line of the 7 and the verticle line of the 7 have kind of like a seam where they join while the small date is smoothe without that seam. The seam kind of looks like two pieces of trim work with 45deg angles cut so they fit together nicely. I guess its harder to explain that I thought but that is a nice way of telling the two apart. Just compare pictures and you will see what I'm talking about.

The high/low 7 thing as presented in the Red Book is rather useless. I was the first to publish the info about the crease in the 7 and that's what I used until I knew the design well enough to tell them apart at a glance. I have cherried just over a half roll in the past 20 years, and have cherried more than a dozen proof coins or sets in the same time period. Best suggestion is to buy one and study it with large date coins. The differences are actually more obvious than many make them out to be.