Hey @Shaun Schafer , where are you seeing the so called die crack ? Can you provide a little better picture . Try with just the cellphone if you can. Thanks
I actually bought a whole roll of these and there’s a bunch with the same crack same area different lengths
@Shaun Schafer Yes to a die crack. They were plentiful in the 1950's but also go way back before then. They seemed to pick up steam as a collectible in the 50's as that's the time when coin collecting in general took off. They were evident on the skull and also on the Memorial reverse through the 60's. I'm not sure if there were die modifications happening but these cracks seemed to not be to prevalent for the longest time after that . They reappeared again in quantities in 1982 with the zinc cents and then kind of disappeared. Then, again in 2010 they came back with a fury in the hair and along the top left of the reverse shield. Again there were die modifications happening with the new design. Die cracks will always be around simply because of die wear, some years being worse than others.
I know the Memorial cents are (or at least were) subject to die cracks. They often radiate out from the upper left and upper right corners of the Memorial roof. Diagonally out to the northwest and northeast.
Jean Cohen cataloged 6,000 die cracks on the Lincoln cent and that was only up to 1969--2nd edition of her book The Classification and values of Errors on the Lincoln Cent. And she did it by hand using a Margood stamp donated by the late Arnie Margolis. The stamp impressed an image of the cent and Cohen drew the die cracks in by hand, 6,000 times. Sorry, I didn't see your die crack in the book. But that date has two great cracked skulls--one looks like an "A" and the other looks like a "B" and both look like they are turned sideways.