SKH-1c-1971D-28 Spiked Head

Description

Advancing into February 2018 with a documentation date of February 8, SKH-1c-1971D-28 on the 1971-D Lincoln Memorial cent extends the spiked head catalog past the point where most dates in the Memorial series would have exhausted their entire variety potential. Attributed by Cuds on Coins, this twenty-eighth entry demonstrates that the concentrated discovery effort applied to the 1971-D date continued producing new varieties at a sustained pace — the catalog grew by roughly one new entry per week during this period. The mechanical explanation for this extraordinary concentration remains consistent: Denver's high-speed coinage presses subjected each obverse die to hundreds of thousands of strikes, and the stress concentration at Lincoln's high-relief hair detail provided a preferential site for fatigue crack nucleation. With hundreds of individual obverse dies rotated through the production line over the course of the year, each die carrying its own microscopic flaws and stress history, a significant fraction developed head-area cracks that produced the characteristic spike on struck coins. No cross-references to other attribution systems have been established for this variety. The spike's unique departure angle from Lincoln's head and its extension into the obverse field remain the primary diagnostic criteria separating SKH-28 from its immediate catalog neighbors.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Bob Byrd
• Cross reference: none. 02/08/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References