Thread: Why have so few 1969-S DDO Lincolns been found?

I would have thought more of these would have been found by now.

I guess the die that created them was discovered fairly quickly.

Originally Posted by SWThirteen

I guess the die that created them was discovered fairly quickly.

This.

Pure speculation here on my part, but I'd venture a guess that less than 5k were made total. Dilute that into a population of 547,309,631 cents, and you have one every 109k or so. In other words, if my speculative population is right, you could discover $1100 in original bank-wrapped rolls of 1969-S cents, and on average, only one would be the DDO. Although, if you find one in an original roll, you're liable to find a few more in that lot as well.

I know the mint tracks how many coins were made with each die... I don't get it, why don't they release those numbers? Could a Freedom of Information request get them released?

Or, maybe they were sifted out by the Mint employees

Originally Posted by jcakcoin

Or, maybe they were sifted out by the Mint employees

Once a DD is noticed, the dies stop, the offending die is pulled, and any cents that haven't already been put into bags are given a quick lookover for offending pieces, which are tossed into a bag to be melted, IIRC. There are instances of these "error" bags escaping the mint, but they are few and far between... the odds that the '69-S DDO bag escaped is pretty much nil, which means that any others found will more than likely come from circulation or old hoards.

Or maybe they are very well made counterfits..... There was a group that was actively counterfitting coins in this date (but not mint mark)... they got caught, but some think that a few of thier S mints could have escaped or have been taken by the local investigators and then sold.

It is very odd that so few have been captured to date, especially given the speed at which cents are made. Even if the press only ran for 15 minutes to an hour, there would have been thousands and thousands of these out there. Anytime so few escape, I must say... "hummmmm...."

Why is there on 3 known 1958 DDO?
Mint workers havin' fun?

Originally Posted by abe

Why is there on 3 known 1958 DDO?
Mint workers havin' fun?

.... if you think that's beyond the scope of possibility, then you haven't been around too long.

Originally Posted by bahabully

.... If you think that's beyond the scope of possibility, then you haven't been around too long.

lol

Originally Posted by bahabully

It is very odd that so few have been captured to date, especially given the speed at which cents are made. Even if the press only ran for 15 minutes to an hour, there would have been thousands and thousands of these out there. Anytime so few escape, I must say... "hummmmm...."

I think it's pretty easy to understand when you consider the minting process. Consider -

The coins are being minted and are being dumped into a hopper. Before the hopper in use is completely full, the dies are changed (the error dies are now in use), and the minting continues. That hopper goes away and a new one takes its place and it is being filled. This hopper contains nothing but the error.

It's then that an employee does his spot check and notices the error. All of those coins go to scrap heap and are melted.

So the only error coins to escape are the few that got out in previous (almost full) hopper. And it is from among that small selection, even if it was a few thousand coins, that the known errors are found. And since the few thousand errors are mixed in a hopper with hundreds of thousands of non-error coins, and since at that time coins were issued in bags of $1000 face value, maybe only 1 or 2 errors is in each bag. And of those only select few are ever even noticed. The rest get eaten up by circulation and are never noticed.

Yeah there may be a few still out there laying in a drawer or somebody's penny jar. But that's likely right where they'll stay until they too eventually get eaten up by cicruclation, never to be noticed.

Chance is the answer. It was pure chance when the dies were changed. It was pure chance when the hopper was changed. It was pure chance when an employee noticed the error. And it was pure chance when any given coin was noticed. Any of the four circumstances greatly limits the number of coins found. And if two or more of the circumstances occurred sequentially the number to be found is reduced exponentially.

Or... old Roy made a few counterfit "s" mints before being snagged.... a few folks with abit of pull got thier hands on them.... and then lobbied ($) the mint to call them genuine so they could make a quick 100k or so.


http://koinpro.tripod.com/Articles/1969S1cDDFound.htm
"....The 1969-S doubled die cent has an interesting history in that shortly after it was discovered in 1970, examples sent into the US Treasury Department for verification were consequently declared counterfeits and confiscated. Several respected hobby representatives continued to insist that they were genuine based on where they were found and on the diagnostics exhibited on the coins. As it turned out, the counterfeits were actually dated 1969 (with no mintmark) and were produced to defraud collectors. According to John Wexler in his cover story in the February 28,1981 issue of Error-Variety News, (where he shows excellent images of the counterfeit 1969 doubled die provided by Alan Herbert) Roy Gray and Mort Goodman received prison sentences for their involvement in the counterfeiting scheme. According to Wexler's article, The 1969 1c Counterfeit Doubled Die on page 140 of his 1984 book, The Lincoln Cent Doubled Die, the the counterfeits were confiscated from the home of Roy Gray in 1969, apparently long before the genuine 1969-S doubled dies were even discovered. Later when the government reversed their position on the 1969-S doubled dies, at least some of the genuine pieces were returned to collectors."



As to mint employee's having fun back in the day.... take a quick look at the wisconsin up and down leaf. I for one don't buy the die debris idea, and employee with a hand tool seems more likely to me.

Originally Posted by GDJMSP

I think it's pretty easy to understand when you consider the minting process. Consider -

The coins are being minted and are being dumped into a hopper. Before the hopper in use is completely full, the dies are changed (the error dies are now in use), and the minting continues. That hopper goes away and a new one takes its place and it is being filled. This hopper contains nothing but the error.

It's then that an employee does his spot check and notices the error. All of those coins go to scrap heap and are melted.

So the only error coins to escape are the few that got out in previous (almost full) hopper. And it is from among that small selection, even if it was a few thousand coins, that the known errors are found. And since the few thousand errors are mixed in a hopper with hundreds of thousands of non-error coins, and since at that time coins were issued in bags of $1000 face value, maybe only 1 or 2 errors is in each bag. And of those only select few are ever even noticed. The rest get eaten up by circulation and are never noticed.

Yeah there may be a few still out there laying in a drawer or somebody's penny jar. But that's likely right where they'll stay until they too eventually get eaten up by cicruclation, never to be noticed.

Chance is the answer. It was pure chance when the dies were changed. It was pure chance when the hopper was changed. It was pure chance when an employee noticed the error. And it was pure chance when any given coin was noticed. Any of the four circumstances greatly limits the number of coins found. And if two or more of the circumstances occurred sequentially the number to be found is reduced exponentially.

Excellent Response Doug!

btw... I agree with Doug's spill also.
However, I'm not one to dismiss things a coincidence either, and when a counterfitting ring gets busted in 1969 with a bunch of '69 dd cents...... and then within a year '69s dd cents appear on the market in "exclusive" hands only...... well I just don't buy it and I wouldn't buy a 69s dd even if I did have money to burn,,, my guess is that those same "exclusive" hands probably can and will produce more of them as the years pass, or if they decide to put a new pool in the backyard next year.

Even if the press only ran for 15 minutes to an hour, there would have been thousands and thousands of these out there.

Back then the presses ran about 60 cycles per minute (120 coins per minute because they were set up as dual die) so an hours production would only be 3600 coins.

When the coins are struck they do not go directly into the tote bin. They go into a holding hopper and every few minutes the press operator takes a few out, inspects them and if they are OK dumps the hopper into the tote bin. Now lets go back to Doug's scenario. only they have just changed the dies installing the DDO, and the tote bin is almost full. They start production and after a few minutes the operater reaches in and grabs a few cents, but the ones he happens to grab came from the other die pair. They check out and he dumps the hopper into the tote bin. The bin is now full and they change it for another one. A little more time goes by, the operator reaches in and grabs some more cents. This time one of them is from the DDO. The press is shut down the die is pulled and the cents in the hopper are scrapped. The problem is what if anything do you do about the one batch that got taken away in that other tote bin? Do you track down the other bin and if it hasn't been mixed with any others do you search it and pull out the DDO's (Take hours) or condemn the entire tote bin? And if it has been mixed with others and sent to bagging do you condemn the entire days production? Or do you just let those few coins from that one hopper load go?

Were the 1969-s DDO's discovered before the counterfeiters were caught?