1922 Lincoln Cent

[carlb]

So here is an age old topic probably. I've got both Looking Through Lincolns by Chuck. I've read articles on several web sites, such as The Linocln Cent Resource and others. There have been discussions about that 1922 Lincoln Cent with no or fait Mint Mark.
It sounds like there are at least 4 different dies used that year. All are sort of worn or whatever. Now here is my question. From what I've heard and/or read Mint Marks were place on coins by hand, not part of the original process to make the coins. IF that was true, why would they be either faint or missing? Wouldn't the individuals placing the Mint Mark on the coin see it didn't work? Are they using old equipment and not looking at what they are doing?
I can see all the answers to why some have worn looking obverses or just reverses or just both from poor dies or just over the years. But what about hand punched Mint Marks?

[eagames]

They never add the mintmark by hand to coins.
They punched it by hand into each obverse die then the die is used to make coins.

The 1922-D die started with a D then it filled with junk, that made the weak D cents. Then they polished the die and it removed the faint D and made the no D cents. Maybe different dies or die states of the same die make up the 4 main ones.

[coppercoins]

And the important thing is...

There IS no such thing as a 1922 plain cent! They are ALL Denver minted, and some have the very minor inconvenience of having no mintmark because of poor coin quality, poor die quality, and lack of interest in making the coins correctly. Why anyone would pay MORE for a coin missing detail because of poor workmanship is beyond me.

[wavysteps2003]

Chuck makes an excellent point. We also have the three legged and three and a half legged buffaloes that command an extremely high premium due to being over abraded by a careless mint worker.

BJ Neff