I was going through some wheat cents tonight and came across a 1944 D where the mint mark looked odd. Attached are four different images of this. I did not adjust color, brightness, sharpness, etc. on any of these. What I'm seeing in these pictures is an "S" mint mark to the north and west of the "D" mark. I don't think it's just some odd trick of light or wear -- I was able to get images of this from multiple angles and they all seem to show the same thing. lincolncentresource calls for OM002 to show the "S" southwest of the D. Is this likely to be an undocumented OMM? Am I nuts even for thinking that?
It does not appear to be the overmintmark... on Billyray's picture the mintmark appears positioned squarely between the 9 and 4, while on your coin it appears shifted in the direction of the 4. Edit... I just reread your post...you're wondering it is a new or different OMM. That would be very cool...let's see some more pictures!
Harry, what sort of other photos do you think would help? Billyray, I did check out coppercoins as well and only saw the two "standard" RPM items for 44d. Thanks for the link.
I've seen a few misplaced mint marks before, and a lot of them wind up being in the date. Is there something going on with the first 4? Or am I just seeing things?
Sorry, I don't see anything in the images provided. The coin has some undesireable stuff around the mint mark. So it is hard to tell what is there. Here are a couple of images to compare your coin.
I agree that it is possibly a 1944D-10M-002 after taking a closer look. It is something you need to take to a dealer for verification I think. Nothing is as good as coin in hand examinations. IMHO
Thanks for the tips and suggestions. Also, now that I followed the provided link to coppercoins I see that it's more detailed than what I had looked at on that site before. I'll take a closer look at that and the coin when I get a chance tomorrow. One question -- looking at the photo provided by coop, it looks like the "S" in OMM-02 is "above and to the left" (or, what I would have called northwest) of the "D". Am I looking at that correctly? lincolncentresource had said "the S can be seen southwest of the D." If it's really northwest, then that would match what I'm seeing on my coin.
It is actually a SW. The loop on the West side is the upper loop of the S. The line through the center is midway. Just a small part of the OMM is showing below the lower serif.
Am I correct in stating you are looking at the S as shown in this picture, which is not one of the overdate varieties shown above but potentially a new overdate?
Looks like an S to me...hard to tell. In 1944 they used 2 different styles of S mintmark. Maybe you can see if either matches well with your coin. http://www.lincolncentresource.com/San_Fransisco_Mintmark_Styles.html
The mint mark location is too far North to be OMM-02. Here is another image that shows the tail of the S below the mint mark. http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/coop49/1944-D_over_S_OMM-02_Wexler_images.jpg
Cool, thanks, coop. That image you just put up is the one that I see the "S" most clearly in for OMM-02. So, it seems like it's not OMM-02. Which means it's either nothing (which I assume is the more likely answer) OR it's a totally different OMM. I would try taking more photographs now and seeing if I could get a better picture, but our camera is being otherwise utilized at the moment. I'll try getting more pictures in the next day or so. Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts!