I have several 1970 s pennies. I'm trying to find a small date. I know all the trick about the shape of the nine and the weak liberty. But I noticed that one of my 1970 s the distance between the "s" and the date is further apart then all the others. Can this help differentiate between a small date and a large or is this another variation of just the common large date? I can up load the pictures if anyone wants to see what I'm talking about.
I'm not sure if the 'S' is a diagnostic for the large/small date. I'm under the impression that the mintmarks are hand punched into the dies, and placement varies...but, I've been wrong before.
You're correct. The "S" mint mark is not a diagnostic and the mint marks where hand punched into the dies back then. :thumb: Lou
Thanks for the link and welcome back Bruce. I pulled all 1970S coins from my albums and folders a month ago to try to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Needless to say they are just sitting in a tube along with all my 1960 and 1960D Lincolns. These two are the most difficult dates for me to figure out. Other than having a known 1960 sm. date to study, I'm not making any progress. A search for the 1970S sm. date on eBay turned up some large date coins being passed off as small dates. So beware if anyone is using eBay photos.
I've never seen a mint mark farther away on the small date so it's probably a diagnostic of a large date.
I'm sure it's a large date now, but it's still cool to see at the different mint marks. The one on the right is the distant mint mark but the picture is bad.
Radness Woah! That is so rad! It's so far away!!! I never noticed S's or D's that were in different locations. Now I'm going to go back and look at all my pennies from that era and before. Does anyone know what year they stopped adding the marks by hand? Are there any reports of mint marks touching or overlapping numerals in the date? Would that be considered a valuable error? I know I would pay a lot of money for such a cent (if I had any money to spen on coins.) -
If I recall correctly, they stopped punching them by hand in 1985 for proofs and 1990 for business (normal) strikes. Yes, there are some interesting mis-punches or "re-punched mintmarks" (RPMs) as they are known. There's an illustrated list of the top 100 for Lincoln cents here: http://conecaonline.org/content/Top1001cRPMs.htm As for the cents both are large date; Bruce posted a nice link to help find the difference between small and large dates for 1970. For 1960, one thing to look for is where the curl of the 6 points- on the small date it points about half way up the 6, on the large date it's more like the lower third. Also, it's extremely rare to find a 1960(P) cent with a small date so any 1960 cent you see will be large date, and you can use that to compare to the 1960-D's you might be wondering about.
Here are pictures of just what AG is talking about and he is right.http://www.coinpage.com/coin-image-6401.html http://www.coinpage.com/coin-image-6398.html Bruce. sorry I could not get the image lined up one on top of each other but you get the idea.
For exact and accurate differences in the 70S coins, check out www.coppercoins.com Note the primary and easy to see difference is the 7 itself. Where the top of the 7 meets the verticle stick there is a distinct line separation in the large date. There is no such line on the small date.
