Seems there are wide and narrow spacings for the AM. I show 2 examples of each, and that is a 0.5 mm lead for scale.
There is a noticeable difference. I don't know if it has anything to do with how well the coin is struck or what. Coneca doesn't have a live link to the RDV's for the Kennedy's. All I could find is a master checklist of Kennedy die varieties and it lists all 1976 coins as RDV-005. Here is the link: http://hermes.csd.net/~coneca/content/kennedymasterchecklist.html
It seems there is a difference. You should get together with James Wiles (CONECA) and see if he is interested with this to create a new reverse die variety. Larry Nienaber
what in the heck are you trying to prove here? all the photos looks to be of the wide A M or maybe the AM from the coins before 1993 which are also the wide A M type. these are all the same type coins and the reason some are closer together than the others is for the fact that thet have been in circulation. as you can clearly see in your photos the bottoms on some of the legs on these letters are pushed out of place from the abuse of circulation. when the bottoms of the AM letters gets pushed over towards each other common sense will tell us the space is closer that when the coins left the mint. AWORDCREATED you need to remember that copper or the copper plated zinc is soft and it is easy for it to get disformed when it is bumped or slammed into other coins plus other circulation damage.
Holy guacamole !!! When did they put zinc in my halves ??? Rascal my friend, this is not about cents.
looks like both of us is too loaded to be on here. tomorrow look at this reply you gave to Larry. I laughed so hard when I read this one I almost fell over. I didn't even read your title for this post and goofed up. what I said applies to all denominations of coins anyway.
This has to do with die wear and die dressing, as it is called. To prolong the use of dies as long as they might be seviceable, dies are often removed from the presses, cleaned and abraded (polished) and then reinstalled in the presses. A new die has the full depth of the lettering effecting the strike of the coins. As a result, the serifs on the letters are more fully formed and the lettering itself is struck to its fullest width. As dies are polished(abraded), some of the surface of the die is removed. As a consequence, the letters become smaller and the serifs less pronounced. The details of lettering usually gets smaller (more narrow) as you work your way down into the surface of the die. On a struck coin, the lettering can appear to be smaller and spread more far apart when struck by a die that may have been abraded several times during its life. This, of course has nothing to do with the reason for the Wide AM varieties on Lincoln cents as that was caused by a mixup in the use of dies meant to be used for proof coins. That did not happen with the halves. We see thinning of letters quite a bit on nickels and coppernickel-clad coins like quarters , dimes and halves. For those who are really into quarters, for example, we see a lot of this on quarters dated 1982, 83 and 84.
