Hello I'm brand new to Coin Talk. I'm going through a collection I inherited and found a 1953D Lincoln cent and it seems like the D is not where it's supposed to be. In the photo, the penny in question is the one on the left. It looks like the D is too high and a bit to the left of where it should be. The placement of the D in the coin on the right seems to be typical. I looked through the coin books that I have (red book, blue book), and also online to see if there's any mention of this, but found none. I'm interested in your feedback on this coin. What do you all think of this "error"? How might this have happened? Does it add any value to the coin? If so, how much? Thanks!
Like Kentucky said, they were hand-punched into the working dies until 1990. If you have the chance, look at Kennedy half dollars from the 1970's. The mintmarks are all over the place. Chris
Thanks, folks, for your feedback. Learn something new every day. So it sounds like even though the mint marks were done manually, there was an accepted tolerance before a coin was considered an error. I'd like to learn more about the history of minting coins. Any ideas of a good place to start? books? websites? Thanks in advance.
