SKH-1c-1971D-32 Spiked Head

Description

Skipping over SKH-31 in the catalog sequence, SKH-1c-1971D-32 on the 1971-D Lincoln Memorial cent was documented by Cuds on Coins on June 2, 2018 — a gap of more than three months from SKH-30's February documentation date. The numbering gap at SKH-31 may reflect a variety that was delisted, reclassified, or reserved within the Cuds on Coins system, while the temporal gap suggests a pause in active searching followed by renewed examination that yielded this thirty-second entry. The extended interval between discoveries is not unusual: variety searching tends to occur in concentrated bursts when collectors have time and material available, followed by quieter periods. SKH-32's June 2018 date places it in a separate discovery wave from the January-February 2018 cluster that produced SKH-22 through SKH-30, indicating that new 1971-D spiked head varieties continued to surface months after the initial concentrated search effort. No external cross-references have been established. The die crack forming SKH-32's spike shares the same fundamental mechanism as all other entries in the catalog — fatigue-driven fracture at the stress concentration around Lincoln's hair detail — but follows its own unique propagation path through the die steel, producing a crack geometry distinguishable from the thirty-plus other entries through careful magnified examination.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Bob Byrd
• Cross reference: none. 06/02/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References