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 Replies: 13 / Views: 1,226 |
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Valued Member
United States
270 Posts |
Why are there large and small dates with some coins? Since they have small and large with both mints of the same year. Is there a reason this was done?
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Member
United States
3242 Posts |
not sure way but heres the years
1928 is one plus 1940, 1941, 43&45
Edited by amac44
03/21/2008 10:29 am
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Moderator
 United States
187702 Posts |
I do not think it was ever done on purpose, it just happened when they had to rework the dies mid-year.
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Valued Member
United States
499 Posts |
In some cases the channge was made due to an excessive number of die chips around the dates, resulting in premature replacement of the dies. The change in the date was designed to alleviate this problem.
Richard
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
And here all the time I thought the Mint was being nice to some people by making some dates amd even some Mint marks of different sizes. Small ones for people with good eyes and larger ones for us older people.  If you breeeze through almost any book on coins you'll see there are numerous coins and many years with two or more different sizes of either date or Mint mark. Example is the 1945S Mercury dime. At one time people thought only that one had two different sized Mint marks. Now it is appearing there are many dates of those dimes with similar different sized Mint marks. You may note this is mostly true of coins produced prior to the Mint finding out about magnifying glasses. Once they found this out, that practice of larger dates and Mint marks stopped.  Now if for any reason you believe me I'll let you in on a private sale of mine where I'm selling a 3 sided coin. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5318 Posts |
"Now if for any reason you believe me I'll let you in on a private sale of mine where I'm selling a 3 sided coin." That will look great alongside my edgeless coin, but I wonder how they'll slab that?  |
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Valued Member
United States
236 Posts |
Three sided coin hugh...... must be Heads, Tails & Belly... |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
It would be helpful if you said what time period you are talking about because there are different reasons at different times in the past.
In the early years the dies were made by hand and the dates were punched into each die. The mint had different size punches for different sized coins. Sometimes the wrong size punches would be used and dies made at one time would have one size while dies made at a different time would have a different size. Coins with different size mintmarks could occur for the same reason.
After they added the date to the hub they made the dies from, different date sizes became much less common. Usually they would only occur if there were problems with a particular hub that required remaking of the hub to correct, such as the chipping on the 1960 mall date cents, or the weak strikes on the 1970 small date. In general the mint tried to restrict hub changes to the period between years so that all the coins of given year would be the same. Some times that wasn't possible. As for why the later coins would be usually be found with the changes at more than one mint was because until 1997 Philadelphia made all of the dies for all of the mints, so when a change was made new dies would go out to all of the mints. Tis meant that all of them would get both the new and the changed dies.
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Valued Member
 United States
270 Posts |
I wasnt thinking of any certain date. Thanks though that really helps. The reasons make a lot more sense now that you say them, I was trying to think in my head what reason there could be and I just kept drawing a blank. Makes sense now that you say it though.
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Valued Member
United States
336 Posts |
i did find 2 1928 s large mint marks.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Per Conder101 In the early years the dies were made by hand and the dates were punched into each die. The mint had different size punches for different sized coins. Sometimes the wrong size punches would be used and dies made at one time would have one size while dies made at a different time would have a different size. Coins with different size mintmarks could occur for the same reason. I would suspect that when that happened it was due to the Mint workers stopping at the same places I frequent where they serve drinking substances that contain a gas known as Alcohol. Previously I used Mercury dimes as an example. The reason is I have well over 3,000 of those things. When separating them in the past by dates and mints, I noticed the differences in date sizes, mint mark sizes, mint mark locations and the orientation of the mint mark. Sure makes me wonder what those Mercury dime people were doing at work. |
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Valued Member
United States
270 Posts |
LoL I want a job where I can have a good time and drink. LoL would sure make dealing with crabby customers much better (hehe or crabby managers)
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
quote:
LoL I want a job where I can have a good time and drink
Maybe you would have liked working at the early mint, they provided a daily ration of rum. (I don't have direct evidence of that but there is a notice in the payment records of one of the employees that since he did not drink he would receive a slightly higher pay rate in lieu of his rum ration. So no evidence that they actually gave them rum but more money to one man because they didn't.) Oddly enough they also discharged employees for being inebriated on the job. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5318 Posts |
"Maybe you would have liked working at the early mint, they provided a daily ration of rum."
Working in the early Mint building, I would've needed it too as the refining and press facilities were under the same roof. Those mint workers had to endure the heat and fumes from smelting, and I doubt they had any health care benefits.
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Replies: 13 / Views: 1,226 |
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Posted 03/21/2008 10:36 am
