SKH-1c-1998-18 Spiked Head

Description

With eighteen confirmed spiked heads, the 1998 Philadelphia Lincoln Memorial Cent continues building one of the deepest single-date catalogs in the Cuds on Coins inventory. SKH-1c-1998-18 documents yet another distinct obverse die that developed a portrait-area crack, and the growing tally makes 1998-P a benchmark for studying how frequently this failure mode occurs across a large die population under consistent production conditions. The relationship between production volume and spiked head count is broadly positive—more dies in service means more opportunities for portrait-area cracks—but the relationship is not strictly proportional, and years with similar output can produce different catalog depths. Environmental factors at the Philadelphia facility, including humidity, temperature fluctuations, and the metallurgical properties of die steel batches used during 1998, could all influence crack initiation rates. Cataloged by Cuds on Coins from Philadelphia Mint production.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Mark Szabo
• Cross reference:  none. 12/29/2017.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References