1964-D Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-004

Description

Attributed as the fourth doubled die obverse variety in the Wexler catalog for the 1964-D Lincoln Memorial Cent, WDDO-004 was struck at the Denver Mint during the most prolific single-year cent production in United States history to that point. The 3,799,071,500 cents struck at Denver in 1964 represented an all-out effort to ease a coin shortage that had disrupted commerce nationwide, with the Mint running extended shifts and accelerating die production to meet demand. This accelerated pace of die manufacturing may itself have contributed to the incidence of hubbing anomalies: each die's multi-impression hubbing session was an individual event conducted under time pressure, and even minor lapses in the precise re-seating of the working hub between impressions could embed a doubled image in the die steel. Once a doubled die entered the production line, it struck coins continuously until normal wear required its replacement, producing a population of identically doubled cents that remained in circulation for decades. WDDO-004 preserves one such die's output. The enormous base mintage means that the absolute number of surviving examples may be substantial even if the variety represents only a single die out of thousands used, though the vast majority of the nearly 3.8 billion 1964-D cents remain unexamined for varieties. The coin was struck as a regular-strike circulation piece on a 95% copper and 5% tin-zinc planchet at 19mm diameter and 3.11 grams, featuring Victor David Brenner's Lincoln portrait and Frank Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse. It was the last year the Denver D mint mark appeared on Lincoln cents before the 1965-67 removal.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Wexler Team

External References