why so few 1969-S DDs?

[Robert]

Millions of coins were made, many dies were extensively used. Why so few DDs? Was the DD discovered that early at the mint?

Any estimation on the population of 69S DD?

[coppercoins]

Unfortunately I do not have a good answer for this one. A comparable die exists for 1970S, and there are approximately just as few known.

There was a huge controversy over doubled dies in 1969 over a P-mint counterfeit that was very extreme in spread - a whole letter width of separation (the G of GOD doubled with the O of the other hubbing). The secret service was confiscating these and took some of the genuine 1969S DDOs as fakes as well. To my knowledge none of the real ones were returned, but I have no idea how many were taken.

[Bob P]

It is true that the Secret service confiscated and never returned five 1969S doubled dies it deemed was counterfeit.
There was a trial (Gray and Goodman) in about 1970 on the possiblity of 1969P cents being counterfeit. The 1969S doubled dies were not allowed to be inspected for authenticity, or allowed as evidence in the trial because the secret service had been told by mint experts that they were indeed within tolerances and deemed as authentic. The secret service chose to believe that all 1969 doubled dies were counterfeit based on the known scam by Mr. Gray on the P mint cents. They even went so far as to seize bags of 1969S cents from the San Francisco Mint in 1970 and sent them to be melted. These bags were believed to be of the time frame where the doubled dies were minted. After the trial the secret service made no more attempts to confiscate 1969S doubled dies being reported. All S mint coins after that were considered genuine. Even so...the original five confiscated 1969S doubled dies were destroyed in 1980.
Who knows how many are out there now, but based on the fact that the secret service seized many bags of S mint coins, and had them melted, then there may have been many hundreds or thousands destroyed. Very unfortunate because the number will be extrememly difficult to nail down.

Bob P

[cladking]

This same question applies to many of the modern coins made by a single die which don't appear in mint sets. It would seem to go beyond the possibility that the mint intercepts and destroys them before getting into circulation. It seems more likely that these coins do go into circulation and are ignored along with all the other coins. This would explain things like why people still find coins like '82 NMM dimes and '72-D DDR quarters in circulation once in a while.

Some of us have personnally looked at enough coins to know that an entire run of some of these didn't get into circulation, though. This is a question which may never be fully answered, but likely some answers will become available in time.