This is an update to my post of 27Dec21, when I broke into a new jar of old cents. The last date in the jar was a single cent from 1991, and since then, I have gone through over 800 cents and saved/conserved 156... this equates to a 18.77 percent rate. Many found from 1980 onward looked brand new...but most had die deterioration issues or wear. So, when I got to 1988, I sorted about 40 cents as Denvers. 10 of these were set aside as spenders for wear. While I was taking a break for food (my wife insists on this kind of thing), I realized I had not checked for the transitional. I checked all 40. In the spender pile I found my first. It has plating issues, has AU53/55 wear, discoloration and split plating on the reverse/USA. 1 out of 40...and I almost turned it back to the wild. I don't have a clue what value it might have, but I welcome all comments. This will not be sold...it stays in the family. My 2 sons will have to flip a coin (pun not intended) to see who gets it...Spark
Very nice find & condition - the "D" is a little more valuable. This variety is starting to take off more since it was added in the cherry pickers guide.
Most of you know what I think of zincoln's so I know nothing of errors or varieties after 1982, so educate me. What's special about this coin?
It’s a transitional design variety. This particular one is for a “zincoln” but there are many others: http://doubleddie.com/58348.html
@Mountain Man …so, if you read the info at Wexler provided by @Danomite you will see this coin is found once for every 482 that were struck, which, BTW, doesn’t mean if you search 482 1988-D cents that you will find one. I learned about this transitional when I joined Coin Talk on 27Oct17, I have been checking all my spare change for it for over 4 years. This one was found in a jar of coins that became full in 1991. Without the jar of coins being set aside 31 years ago, I would still be looking… One last note…I researched the value and found it to be worth approx. $100, according to one source dated 22Feb20…so, 2 years ago. This source also said the variety was slated to be added to the Cherry Pickers Guide in its next edition, I don’t know if a new edition is available by now. BUT…the source had the scarcity info backwards…the 1988 Philadelphia is twice as scarce as the Denver, so I think my coin is worth about 50 bucks. I hope I didn’t overwhelm you with all of this, but you did say to educate you. Cheers!…Spark
The 1988 RDV-006 is in the 6th edition Vol.1 of the Cherrypickers guide cent-nickel type. I had it for a number of years and the copyright date is 2015, so I guess it's been out since then. As with the RDV-006 Mountain man - here is the article that Dr James Wiles wrote to Coinworld back in 2007 about finding the first one. I had to convince him about this variety which a few collectors shot it down from the beginning that there was no such thing. In layman's terms- I like to say that there is a handful of different Lincoln Memorial designs and the 1988 has reverse of a 1989. To most people the design is same ever since the beginning like 1909 & 1959. Plus, most like to call this an error but it's variety. Which these pennies where stuck on purpose but the mint made a mistake on choosing the die pairs which they made a subtle design change. Hopefully the Coinworld article helps explain, plus Variety Vista could help further. Snowman