Metalman - do you have any pictures of the 96 ? If all of the coins do not have the feature then there has to have been more than one small date hub used.
Metalman - I may be slightly off when it comes to modern US die making practices but I think there was One Master hub used to make Working Hubs that then made working dies. The working hubs are "positives" while the Master hub and Working dies are negatives. So in 1960, there had to be one small date master hub and some unknown number of large date master hubs (possibly one). Working hubs were made from the master hubs WITHOUT mint marks. The mint marks were added to each die individually at the mints. So since all examples of small date coins contain the same two odd features - I presume that it was simply a feature on the Master Hub that created all of the small date Working hubs and dies. Minor changes (weakening of the features) is attributable to wear of the working hub. As to how many dies existed with the small date - I don't know - the mint records might give a total number of dies but I doubt that they were aware of the change in design until it was too late. They don't like to make "varieties". So I doubt you can get anything more than an estimate of how many dies were involved.
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