Folklore-The 55 Double Die Cent

There are odd snippets of information in my head that I seem to have absorbed over the years. I have a story about the 55 DD cent that is either a dream or American folklore that I cannot seem to confirm so I am wondering if I dreamed this.

The way I remember this is that a cigarette tax was implemented in 1955 that brought the price of a pack of cigarettes to .24 cents. Because vending machines didn’t make change, cigarette manufacturers would put a cent into the cellophane of their product to make change for the .25 cent vending purchase. And this cigarette cellophane was where most of the 55 DD cents originated from.

Is there any basis to this story or is it something I dreamed?

 

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Hmmm interesting, I've never heard that one before but that doesn't mean much at all!, great deduction, maybe that was in a movie, idk!

 

I do recall the story about the cent in the cello for change but I don't recall that this was the origin of the '55 DD. Interesting....

 

In David Lang's book he wrote that there were two cents put in each pack. Either way I think the story is true.

 

I don't know about the cello story but this all I've ever heard : It is believed that these coins were produced on an overnight shift where supervision was lacking and quality standards were not properly followed. Many coin presses run continuously without direct human supervision. Therefore, the press continued to manufacture error coins at the rate of almost 200 coins per minute.

 

I've heard this story before too. I don't know if there's any truth to it or not. I do remember seeing pennies in the cigarette pack cellophane, though. Similarly, I've heard that many of the 1950-D nickels were found at one of the Lake Erie resorts, either Put-In-Bay or Cedar Point, can't remember which. I've also heard that the reason why it's hard to find 2009 nickels is that most of them were sent to Puerto Rico

 

How many of these are extant? Do we have any estimate?

 

Most of the 1982 No P dimes ended up at Cedar Point.

 

David Bowers wrote about the 55 DDO but I can't find the book. He would know the complete story. He was a young collector/dealer in those days. I remember that he was buying all of these he could find when they came out and sold them later for a nice profit.

 

I have heard that story although I thought the butts went for 9 cents.

 

PCGS has it at 15,000.

 

Whoa there - had to get out the Funk and Wagnalls to look up extant.

 

Sounds like you are blowing smoke. I'm being facetious as usual!

 

Thanks, Larry. I'd imagine this run wasn't caught at the Mint because if it were these errors would still be in the bucket and would never have got out. But then I have to think these started out as fresh dies with this error already on them, and were they normally discarding the dies after runs of only 15,000? I'm trying to take a dive into how these happened, and how they got out.

 

My apologies. Being a horse, humans sometimes think I'm dumb. That's why from time to time I like to use big words.

 

I’ve heard this story as well. I’ve also heard that this is why there are so few Red 1955 DDOs in existence

 

It's thought that the mint caught the problem but it was too late. The cents were mixed in with a twelve hour production. The mint said the heck with it and shipped the coins.

 

Are mint workers allowed to collect coins ?

 

This coin is not an error!

If it is a feature consistently mass produced identically on thousands of coins it is by definition a variety and NOT an error.

For errors think one-off. The same type of one-off can occur more than once, even in similar ways, but they are still one-offs.

 

Interesting. Then the next thing they know they just let the most notorious doubled die coin in U.S. history slip right through their hands. Gosh I'd be kicking up my hoofs something terrible.