1961 Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-004

Description

Produced at the Philadelphia Mint without a mintmark, the 1961 Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-004 is a business-strike variety from the Lincoln Memorial Cent series that owes its existence to an imperfect hubbing sequence. During die production, the master hub was impressed into the working die multiple times to achieve full design depth, and a slight misregistration between those impressions embedded a doubled image into the die steel. Every cent subsequently struck from that die inherited the doubling, making WDDO-004 a true die variety rather than a strike anomaly. The 1961 date sits near the beginning of the Memorial reverse era, which had commenced only two years earlier with Frank Gasparro's redesign replacing the wheat-ears motif, and collectors of early Memorial cent varieties regard the 1959 through 1964 span as a particularly fertile period for hub doubling discoveries. WDDO-004 is the fourth of thirteen documented doubled die obverse varieties for 1961 Philadelphia cents. No cross-references to CONECA or other major cataloging systems have been published, and specific die markers have not yet been recorded in available references, so attribution relies on careful comparison of the doubling pattern against known photographic standards for this particular die.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Wexler Team

External References