Why large/small dates for 1970-S cents?
Testoon
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Why are there two different styles of date for 1970 cents and why are both only found on San Francisco cents? It seems odd that only one mint would get both types.
Bill
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As someone who spent dozens of hours digging though rolls in the 80s looking for these I have always wondered this as well.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
Well the philly and Denver mint had both small and large date cents in 1960. same as with the 1982 P&D small and large dates. Guess it isn't that strange. Maybe those were the years that new master dies were created?? I have no idea.
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
The 1960 Large Date was a deliberate change because the Denver Mint allegedly experienced die chipping in the Small Date. If you picture in your mind the recessed date in a steel die, there is a thin, raised ridge of steel that forms the recessed inside of the 9 and the 6 on the struck coin. Those ridges apparently were too thin to hold up, so they made a new Master Die with a larger date, enlarging the 0 as well.
(The Philadelphia Mint only made a few million of the Small Date cents early in 1960, which was standard operating procedure for every denomination in every Mint in every year at the time so they had some on hand, before it switched its Bronze coin production to foreign coin orders. By the time it resumed making Lincoln cents, the date change had already been made. See my COINage article on the subject.)
The difference in the 1970 coinage is much more subtle, and I do not think that there was any deliberate attempt to change the "size." For whatever reason two different Master Dies were made, and there were slight differences in the execution, most easily seen in the relative heights of the 7 and the 0. Go ahead and sign your name twice. I guarantee that there will be slight differences in what otherwise is the same thing.
Had the 1960 change never happened I am sure that very few people would have cared about the slight differences in the 1970-S cents. However, Dave Bowers and his company at the time decided to promote them heavily, and I believe lobbied to get them in the 1971 Redbook, which back then came out around July 1 every year. Once in the Redbook they were immortalized.
I cannot answer the OP's question as to why two Master Dies were made, or why the second one was only used in SF. I can speculate and say that a new Master Hub reduction had been introduced in 1969 (compare the 1968 and the 1969 versions, which are enormously different), and it was possible that somebody thought that the first version of the 1970 change to the 1969 version was a bit lacking somehow. The Engraver could have quickly made a new Master Die with an unintentional but frankly insignificant slight change in position, and so as not to waste them all of the dies already made which were descended from the first Master Die they were mint marked and shipped off to San Francisco for use, never to be heard from again. As I say this is speculation on my part.
TD
The relatively new Chief Engraver at the time, Frank Gasparro, loved to fiddle with designs, just as Gobrecht did in the 1835-1840 era. Look at the reverses of the 1972, 1973 and 1974 cents, especially his initials, and the Eisenhower dollars.
Thanks for your input! The depth of knowledge here is amazing! It is so good to be able to hear from pillars of the numismatic community.
That’s a very god point about Gasparro making lots of little changes.
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Glad to help.