I was going thru some half dollars and I noticed that the mint mark on one was larger and to the left , and the other one was alot smaller and to the upper right? Is this a error or did they change this from 1981 to 1985? Noah
Before about 1990 mintmarks were hand-punched into the dies. That means that there will be some variation in location of the mintmarks. For each denomination and type the Mint had a specified area within which mintmarks were to be located. As long as the mintmark fell within that delineated area it was OK. As far as the different size of the mintmarks, mintmark punches wore out and got damaged through the years and were replaced. Sometimes there was more than one mintmark used in a given year. That could explain the variation in size of the mintmarks on your coins. OR it could be that one mintmark was sunk deeper in one die than the other. Who knows? All these things are a reflection of the human element in making coins. Now mintmarks are placed on the master hubs so there will be no differenct in mintmark style, size or location on modern coins (since about 1990) that are made using the single-squeeze hubbing process.
Thats cool, I guess I can just spend these 2 then , just didnt want to let them go if they were an error, thanks for fast reply. Noah
Also the harder you punched the mintmark into the die the larger it would be. So different sized mintmarks can be created from the same punch.
