First,
Die chips are common on post-WW II cents, but sure can be fun to find! These are legitimate errors, though not rare or valuable. I'll caution you that hunting for them and finding them can be addictive. On UNC coins, they are worthy of 2x2s.
It's fun hitting a roll with multiples of the same error. There's a reason for that. During this era, both mints used Bliss vertical strike coining presses. These presses were fitted with four heads, allowing four die pairs to strike coins on the same blow. If one die developed a chip, roughly 1/4 of the coins streaming from the tray on that press would have the error. Coins were bagged (in that day) from the tray feed, and bags of cents from one press would have the same ratio of errors. In that day, banks rolled the coins from the bags, preserving the rough ratio from each die pair. All that has changed now, but it explains the prevalence of errors and varieties in some bags and rolls from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Welcome, and enjoy the hunt!
Posted 06/27/2020 4:12 pm
