1983P Lincoln cent with obverse trails

[wavysteps2003]

1983 seemed to be a very busy year for the Lincoln cent concerning varieties from the Philadelphia Mint. With the ten obverse doubled dies, 2 pseudo counter clashes and the two reverse doubled dies, it has been a heavily searched date for the Lincoln cent.

However, that being true, how did this one slip by? Or is the story, that not knowing what it is that it was thrown back into the mix!

No matter what the story, let me introduce you to 1983P-1DEO-001TS, a trail die for 1983.





As you can see, there are trails from the tops of the letters in LIBERTY, with an offset direction of 320 degrees. There are also faint trails on the R and S of TRUST, in the same direction. Oddly enough, this die has been heavily abraded to remove a clash die clash and is at best in the LDS state. I expect that an EDS or MDS coin will show stronger trails on the design elements affected.

BJ Neff

[Bob P]

Very cool, and nice pics BJ. Since we can now go back to 1983 for trails dies, now it gets the wheels turning again. Probably nothing to it...but can the change in metal composition in some way be at fault? Probably not since the trails are also found on other denominations. Were they experimenting with the single squeeze in 83? Who's going to come up with the first all copper trail die?

[wavysteps2003]

There is even a reverse trail die from 1982 (LDZ), so we can push the clock back even a bit further. As to the exact date of the MINT beginning to experiment with single squeeze hubbing, that may never be known. All we know at presnt is that it was before October of 1985.

What I do find odd is that since the beginning of this year, three early date trail dies have appeared; 1982P reverse trail die, a 1983D obverse trail die and now this 1983P obverse trail die.

For all of you who do get ERRORSCOPE, the full explanation of how these anomalies are formed will be in the article that I did. It is rather lengthy, however, once read, it does give you an understanding what is going on with the hubbing process to form these lines.

BJ Neff