While sorting trough a bunch of halves I noticed a distinct difference in the mint mark placement on the 1990D Kennedy halves. On most Kennedy's the mint mark is placed immediately under the bust on the right side. I have several 1990D's where the mint mark is lower and to the right. In two cases the mink mark lines up even with the 1990 date. In other words. If you were to draw a straight line across the top of both nines in the date it would pass through the middle of the D in the mint mark. This strikes me as odd. Only the 1990's have that peculiarity. Any ideas? Thx!
Strikes me as a bit odd since by 1990 supposedly all of the mintmarks had moved to the master hub and should have been in the same place on all dies. It may be possible that 1990 was the last year that there were hand punched mintmarks, but my understanding ws that it was the cent that was the last one to switch over to the master hub method. (Which strikes me as odd. The cent would be the FIRST one I would have switched over.)
Method for application of the mint mark to Proof coin dies was changed in '85. It didn't change for circulation coinage until '90 & '91 - page 20 of the 2007 Red Book. Pretty sure cents were the first to be changed and halves the last.
In my many, many, many thousands of halves searched, I've seen some odd mintmark placements in the late 80's, but not enough that I would count them as an error. I've had a few that were close enough to the date that it really made me wonder if it could have been an error, but the criteria I use is "if the mint would knowingly release it, then it's not an error" and since the mintmark was hand punched, there was bound to be some variability.
