1964-D Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-002

Description

The second cataloged doubled die obverse variety for the 1964-D Lincoln Memorial Cent, WDDO-002 emerged from the Denver Mint's record-breaking production run that saw 3,799,071,500 cents struck in a single year. This staggering output — nearly 3.8 billion coins from one facility — was the Mint's response to a severe coin shortage that had gripped the nation throughout the early 1960s, caused by a combination of population growth, expanding retail and vending machine commerce, and widespread coin hoarding. The production volume demanded a proportionally enormous number of working dies, and each die's individual passage through the multi-impression hubbing process carried an independent probability of hub misalignment between successive impressions. When misalignment occurred, the resulting doubled image became a permanent part of the die, transferring to every cent struck from it throughout its service life. WDDO-002 documents one such die from the Denver production, carrying a doubled obverse created during the hubbing stage. Variety collectors focusing on the 1964-D cent benefit from the enormous surviving population — with nearly 3.8 billion struck, examples are readily available in circulated grades, making the search for DDO varieties an accessible pursuit. The 1964-D cent is the last Denver Mint Lincoln cent to bear the D mint mark before the three-year mint mark removal beginning in 1965, a policy change that was itself a response to the coin shortage. Struck as a regular-strike circulation coin on a 95% copper and 5% tin-zinc planchet, the coin features the Brenner obverse portrait and Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Wexler Team

External References