So in the example of the extreme 1955 doubled die, how the heck did it get past the mint staff? You would figure that there would be close inspections of the die after it's made. A minor one is completely forgivable but for the 1955 penny, somebody looked at the die and was like "meh, it's alright" and let it go?
I don't think that was the case. They do inspect and when someone finally notice they do attempt to fix the issue. They pull out the coins as much as possible but some do get out into circulation. Good example is the 1955 DD. It's rare to find because not that many got out.
In any industrail production line there is an inherent conflict between quality control on one hand and meeting production goals on the other. Anything that stops or slows the production line causing goals to slip reflects badly on the superintendents, workers, and foremen. There is also pressure from management to increase production. Quality control is viewed as a necessary evil. The doubled dies and other relatively minor errors still produce spendable coins of the correct weight, and size. . If no one looks too close who is the wiser? The choice to stop production to pull a die, and search for the problem coins reflects badly on all involved except for the quality control person who catches it. There would be an effort on the part of the crew to handle this as quietly as possible. Some coins that were mixed in with the millons of good ones quietly went on their way. They could have been noticed by the line workers but missed by quality control inspectors who typically come around a few times a day and take some samples to inspect.
Go to the US Mint web page and take a virtual tour. It's under Learn, then How coins are made. The Mint has multiple machine producing the same coin at the same time. Look at the mintage figures. How can anyone or any organization inspect them all? They can't. They inspect them in batches. The dies are inspected but the die is not the problem. Something else goes wrong and the die strike the coin blank twice, creating the doubling. The die itself is not doubled as you suggest.
Now you are confusing things A Doubled Die is a Die that some of the elements that are incused on the Die are Doubled.. A blank getting struck twice or more times creates multiple images on the coin.. Hence Double or Triple struck.
According to what I have read/been taught the 1955 Doubled Die cents WERE CAUGHT at the mint before shipment. Someone there made the call to release them into circulation rather than destroy the errors. The rest is history.
This post is 100% incorrect. You may wish to look on the Internet to learn how doubled DIE coins are produced.
That is what I read too. The problem is that there are lots of machines each one dumping thier coins into a shared container of some sort waiting to be bagged, or rolled. To remove the bad ones several hours, or even days worth of coins have to be destroyed. This is very expensive.
Just adding additional info to your explanation. That's why virtually all of them were released. I did not get that impression from your original post.
