Any chance of a1955 DDO Lincoln being discovered in a 1955 OBW roll?

fivecents

I read in trends price guide that 20,000 1955 DDO cents were mixed in with 10 million regular cents before being sent off to the federal reserve. Any chance of newly discovered 1955 DDO cents found in original rolls or bags?

darktone

No

JrGMan2004

Wasn't this the one that was distributed to a certain area, so some people were able to obtain rolls of them?

rich

Never happened.Its an Urban Legend that roll(s) of 55/55 Double Die cents were ever found.Q.David Bowers wrote :A few of them were placed inside a packs of cigarettes outer wrapper by the vending machine company as change.You put 30 cents in and 2 cents change was inserted into the outer wrapper.They were 28 cents a pack back then.A customer had dropped in his shop to tell him about itHe didn't smoke ,but once he found out ,he cleaned out the machine.I think he ended up with a dozen of them.At the time they were a novelty and he resold them for about $10-$15 each !!!
"The error was discovered by mint employees after about 40,000 pieces were produced. Since about 24,000 pieces were already mixed in with normal cents, it was decided that these would be released. The remaining error coins were destroyed. Mint employees assumed that the error would never be noticed.
The double-dies first appeared in Upstate New York near the end of 1955 and caused quite a sensation."

oreville

In 1965 200 obw rolls were opened up by a dealer in Pennsylvania and 3 1955 DDO cents were found. All three were pretty heavilly spotted. It has happened before. I can happen again but is pretty remote.

The doubled die cent was so well distributed that most of them found their way into circulation before they were retrieved.

As rich said, these doubled die cents did cause a sensation but at $5, $10, $15, etc. apiece, they were quite affordable. All of the excitement in 1955 throughout the 1950's and 1960's was over the 1955-S cents. For years, the 1955-S obw cent rolls were far more expensive than the 1955 cent rolls.

For so many years, you couldn't give the 1955 obw cent rolls away.

cladking

It's hardly impossible but there are a few factors which would seem to work against it.
Most significantly is that even in those days most cents went from the mint straight into
circulation. Even if 5% were set aside by collectors then that would mean only some
half million coins of the original lot was set aside. Of course collectors generally would
have known that these coins were from this lot or area and gone out of the way to check
them for the variety. After all these years normal attrition would severely reduce the
chances of any of these coins remaining in rolls and the selective attrition would be devas-
tating to populations.

Coins minted together always have some tendency to stay together because of mint
handling and shipping practices. Coin is mixed with current production and sent out in
batches of rolls, bags, pallets, or jumbo bags. The number of these that can be affected
is limited only by the lenght of time that the coin in question is being minted.

fivecents

Great info.

It is hard for me to believe that every single 1955 DDO has been discovered no matter how diserable and rare. The way these coins were released into circulation....I KNOW there are undiscovered examples still to surface on the collector market.

darktone

There is a slight chance but I think the chances of finding one is so slim that it boarders on impossible- although I still look whenever I get a mint set or a roll. It is absolutely not worth paying a premium for a roll of 55's thinking you have a chance of finding one though. mike

jdimmick

A local dealer in the Greensboro area last year or year before that bought a large hoard of wheats which contained three 55 DDO's. I am not sure of the grades, but I believe they were on the upper end of AU brown's. Don Heath has been going to this shop for years and might could add a little more about this story?

jim

coppercoins

Chances of ever having found an entire roll of any one die pairing in an original roll would be infinitely small - enough to say impossible. The 1955 doubled die was, however, distributed in original rolls at usually no more than four to six per roll on average. They were not "planted" in the rolls, they were simply wrapped as normal cents in counting machines with millions of other coins from a dozen other die pairings that were not doubled dies.

Search through enough rolls from original source and you will see the same thing I do...anywhere between one and 28 of a single die pairing in a single roll is what I've seen. Anywhere between five different dies to over a dozen different dies represented in a single roll. Counting 50 per roll, do the stats.

Most of the 1955 doubled dies ended up in Pennsylvania, and nearly 100 per cent of the original source material has already been opened. Although estimates are just that, there were far more than 20,000 of them released. Given the die state of some of the latest ones known, there had to have been over 300,000 of them made. The mint discovered them after they had gone into counting bins and could do little to destroy them and have enough coins for circulation, so they let them go into the bags, which were rolled by the federal reserve system. Some reports say that some were destroyed after discovery, other reports say that all of them were released. Truth of the matter is that nobody knows how many were released, and the other truth of the matter is that they are much more common than their value reflects.