Something I've Always Wondered (regarding mint mark errors)

ChuckC

show can a D be struck over an S or vise versa when the dies are all under one roof?

morgannut2

The reverse dies from the Carson City Mint, closed in 1893, were reused by the New Orleans mint in 1900 and restamped for Morgan production.

kranky

Up until about ten years ago, ALL the dies were made in Philadelphia. So workers at the Philly mint were responsible for punching the mintmarks into the dies for the other mints. Sometimes they would accidentally punch in the wrong mintmark and correct it by overpunching with the correct one, and sometimes they were just trying to reuse dies (like morgannut2 indicated) instead of wasting them.

Once the mintmarks were applied, the dies would be sent to the proper mints.

Priest

The dies are't under one roof the d's start in Denver the S's start in San Francisco, some tines they the dies were shifted to another mint and the mint would over place there mint mark. Thus over mint mark OMM. And you will here much info on this subject. That you will recive.

jdsinva

I believe once upon a time, the branch mints added their own mint marks to the dies when they received them. I've seen stories that indicated the mint workers would punch a wrong mint mark and then correct it by repunching with the appropriate mint mark over top of the mint mark in error. In other instances, the dies were shuttled around where needed and the mint workers would just punch their mint mark of the existing one.

Qulaity control was not a buzz word at the mint years ago.

Jeff

seanq

That would kinda beg the question, why would a mint worker in San Francisco have a Denver mintmark die punch in the first place?

I think most of the time these occur because of a need to reclaim dies - I can count many cases along with the O/CC dollar where coins weren't minted at all at the "undermintmark" location. Off the top of my head: 1956-D/S cent, 1955-D/S nickel, and 1949-D/S quarter. The 1950-S/D and D/S quarters sound ilke the result of a shipping error, each mint got a die intended for the other. There are a few which are just inexplicable - why do 1911-D/S or 1980-D/S cents exist?

BTW, jdsinva, your icon pic - is that a 1941-S RPM#1 Mercury Dime?


Sean Reynolds

ChuckC

ah, great stuff, thanks

Conder101

Kranky pretty much has the correct answer, the dies were mintmarked in Philadelphia and then sent to the proper mint. They were not marked at the individual mints because that would require the mint to have the facilities for the hardening of the dies are they were marked. there are a few cases where unmarked dies were sent to the branch mints. The reason we know they were unmarked is because there is correspondance from the branch mints informing Philadelphia that they were not marked and are being returned. There are also a few cases where the branch mint DID go ahead and hand cut the mintmark into the die. Probably because of great need for the the die. Two examples that come to mind are the 1854 huge O quarter and the 1870-S three dollar gold (The 70-S gold dollar may also have a hand cut mintmark as well, I don't remember.)

One reason why an overmintmark could occur is because a mint was being closed down or would not be producing that coin but there were already a supply of mintmarked dies already on hand. Such as the buffalo nickel in 1938 or even more so the S mintmarked nickel dies on hand in 1955. San Francisco wasn't going to be striking nickels in 1955 and they were being closed down as a mint so they would not be needed in the future. At least ten S mint dies were on hand and rather than scrap them the were maked with D and sent to Denver.