The 1955 and 69S are hard for me to believe they are a genuine doubled die. The spread in the dates are too far apart. Looking at an obverse die, in my opinion, there is no way the dates would have that much of a spread between them. Most doubled dies have the doubling at least close or touching each each other on the letters or numbers. I just don't think it would be possible. Something smells about it.
well, the 1955 has been accepted for 62 years as real ,and the 1969 S has been approved as real for about 45 years, discounted for the few years when the Secret Service thought it was a fake
I'm with you and if memory serves me correctly, the guy that bought the cheese sandwich used the image to make t-shirts and made a small fortune.
Back to the original thread... Tim, I kind of understand what you mean. But you are not going to get many to agree with you. Do you understand how the Doubled Die occurs? They are legit. It just happens in different degrees. What you stated is like someone saying... I don't believe a jet liner airplane can actually fly up in the sky. How can such a huge thing weighing so many tons get off the ground, go against gravity and stay up in the air in such a way that it does. It's BS and I don't think it would be possible.. Something smells about it
That's an interesting theory, especially on the 1955. I'll agree to this much, they had to be blind to miss that.
They didn't miss it-they decided to release them anyhow due to the high demand for coinage at that time. Both of these are genuine doubled dies. (yeah-I got "doubled" right-"double" bothers me, too.) Other extreme examples, such as the 1916 doubled die nickel and the 1942-D 1-O-I doubled die quarter are genuine, too. It doesn't take much out of register die rotation on the second or subsequent hubbing-to cause a dramatic effect.
So they knew about it. That's interesting. I wonder if any of them took any. Oh wait, that might be illegal.
They had already shipped 20-25,000 of the 1955, and when they discovered the error they destroyed the other 15,000 they had produced. "It is estimated that 40,000 of these coins were minted, all during one night shift at the Philadelphia Mint. Roughly 20,000-24,000 of the pennies were introduced into circulation after the minting error."
You think the 1955 is too extreme to be believable, the greatest rotation between hubbing is on an 1872 dime. the two hubbing are almost 180 degrees apart in rotation.
The Mint employees must have a system where they actually check the hammer die before they start minting coins. How could a separation be that great if the die was inspected before minting?
Long day, you're bored, you're tired, you've looked at 300 dies already, and you missed something. Remember on even something as major at the 1955 DDO you are talking about a rotation of what 1 degree? And a displacement of .1 to .2 mm?
One problem with examining the thing 50 or 75 years later is, we'll only ever know the what, not the why or the how. Keep in mind, when you're setting about striking 330 milllion identical coins, you're not going to be inspecting every one. All the same, the die got loose into production somehow, and the Mint acknowledges having discovered the doubling but chose not to manually go through over two million pounds of Cents to find the 24,000 or so which had gotten mixed in with them. I don't blame them. Keep in mind, the dies themselves were a mass-production effort as well. It took more than 500 die pairs to produce that many coins, I'd think, and don't forget the time pressure. What would you propose as an alternative explanation which would prove every numismatic expert of the last half-century wrong?
