How To Tell Small And Big Dates

Here is a good place to start to distinguish between small and large date Lincoln cents http://www.lincolncentresource.com/...lldates.html

John1

Also the distance of the 2 from the rim helps. a big gap - small date, small gap - large date.

Reminder, this is a family site

in general, the most valuable errors are ones visible to the naked eye (oops, family site!), the more magnification you need to see an error, the fewer people will be interested in collecting it

for me, an unaided-eye view is the first pass, if something looks odd, then I examine it with a 10x loupe, a scope is reserved only to study things already visible with the loupe

if you put every coin under a scope, yes, you'll find all sorts of anomalies, but the vast majority of them will be post mint damage, and you'll be wasting time when there are more interesting coins waiting to be examined