So anyway I was going through some of my wheaties and came across this 1956 D cent with the mint mark not where it should be. I have no clue on what I have here, and being new to the forum I ask for the communities help on figuring out what I have Below is a pic I used with my scanner
Socomer- Welcome to Coin Talk. What you are seeing is very common for pre-1990 coins, especially the '50s and '60s. Before 1990 the mint-marks were punched into the dies by hand, so they varied as to location. I think during those years there must have been a lot of at-work recreational drug use by the mint workers. 1956 is also a notorious year for wild repunched mintmarks.
All of the wheaties had the mint mark punched by hand on the dies, so they are multiple placements, especially for the Denver mint. As long as it is below the date, and doesn't touch the coat or the rim, it is considered within specs. WELCOME to the forum! jim
talk about an aggravating job!! that would have been horrible, all day everyday punches a millions of little D's on some copper. every time i look at a pre'90, i think of that.
That's pretty funny, the idea that someone would be punching the mint mark on each individual coin. LOL That would make the cost of minting rise dramatically I think. Say you could punch 30 coins a minute. With 2 fifteen minute breaks a mint puncher could turn out 1800 coins an hour x 7 1/2 hours (likely less, since it's a government job) =13500 coins a day = 67500 coins a week x 48 weeks (allowing for vacation & paid hilidays) = 3,240,000 coins a year. Going to need a lot of mark punchers to make it work. LOL Perhaps we should do this to create more jobs ? Sorry, ran on.
I don't know that inefficiency is caused by it being government, or because of its' size. I have worked for some provate companies that sure were not interested in being better. Egos or something ? And the military is pretty efficienct at platoon levels, but gets worse as the scope increases. In my opinion anyway.
