1908 Indian Head Cent Misplaced Date FS-302 Snow-9

Description

Cross-referenced as FS-302 in the Fivaz-Stanton Cherrypickers' Guide and as Snow-9 in Rick Snow's comprehensive Indian Head Cent variety reference, this 1908 Indian Head Cent displays a misplaced date variety where the digits 08 can be seen repunched in the denticles southeast of the date — evidence of an initial date punch impression that landed outside the intended date position before the die was correctly struck with the final date placement. This is a different die from the FS-301 variety, which shows the full date misplaced in the lower denticles, distinguishing these as two separate working dies that each experienced their own misplaced date events. The southeast displacement of the 08 into the denticle area indicates the date punch contacted the die at a diagonal angle during the initial incorrect impression, with the angled entry leaving the partial-date remnant in the border area of the design. Misplaced dates on Indian Head Cents occurred during the manual date punching process where individual four-digit date logotypes were hammered into each working die by hand — a procedure where the initial positioning attempt sometimes struck the wrong area of the die face before the engraver corrected and applied the final, properly located date. The 1908 Indian Head Cent was designed by James Barton Longacre and struck at the Philadelphia Mint in bronze composition (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc) weighing 3.11 grams with a diameter of 19.05 mm. The 1908 date is the penultimate year of the Indian Head Cent series, which ended in 1909 with the transition to the Lincoln Cent. The dual Cherrypickers and Snow cross-references confirm this as a widely recognized variety in the standard attribution literature.

Attribution History

• FS-302, Snow-9