Lincoln Cent Bar "L", Wait Till You See The Date.

Hi wavysteps

Interesting,, would you give a brief Narritive on the value and rarity of the Bar L cents ?

Thanks
Rick

First, a brief explanation of what a BAR "L" is. It is a Class V doubled die (pivoted hub doubling) that can have direction in either the counter clockwise (CCW) or clockwise direction (CW). This direction actually determines what part of the doubling on the L will be seen; if it is CW, then the most common occurrance will be a bar under the L. If it is CCW, then a bar may be seen above the horizontal of the L and the vertical bar of the L maybe elongated. This anomaly happened mostly from 1960 through 1967, with the most occurring in 1964 (13). Although not a dramatic doubled die, the twenty + dies that do have this variety would make a nice collection.

What was surprising about the 1915-D Lincoln Cent with a possible BAR "L" (I use the word possible, for it is presently being attributed by John Wexler) is that this maybe the first doubled die for this date. Less surprising is that it waited all these years to be found.

The variety/error coin collector is in a new age for this part of the hobby. As more and more people make the switch from loop to scope, more and more of these specialty dies will be found. Case in point; just recently I "discovered" a 1946-S Lincoln Cent with an inverted mint mark and also a very nice "new" 1946 Class II +VI DDO Lincoln Cent (pictures are included in this post). For fifty years these to die anomalies have been laying around waiting to be discovered and you would think with all the RPMs in 1946-S, plus the great OMM-001, that this would have been found long ago. How many more varieties are out there waiting to be found? Who knows, however, I do know that with better information, more education and increasingly finer equipment, the chance are many more will be found.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f.../46PDDO2.jpg

This is the 1946 Lincoln Cent, DDO-006

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f...P6190001.jpg

This is the 1946-S Lincoln Cent, 1MM-001 with inverted ball serif mintmark

You all have a good one and keep on searching!

WAVYSTEPS2003 aka BJ Neff

welcome to the forum ; as you do so well in sharing ; thank-you for sharing yet again. "to err is human ; to forgive tis devine"