That's a nice illustration. It catches the diagnostic details while at the same time highlighting how hard they actually are to see in some cases.
To elaborate, that's because the actual process which created the 1942/1's was a hubbing process, not a date punching process. The hubs already had the dates on them, and a 1941 die got deliberately hubbed a second time for use in 1942. They got the operation almost perfect - nothing resembling this kind of doubling anywhere else on the die - but the slight changes in the date betrayed them. And when you think about it for a moment, the changes seem odd at first. "1942" is a longer date than "1941," yet the 4 in 1942 was pushed out farther; the underlying 4 is left of the new one. The only way they fit a 2 in there at all was to also raise the last two digits; at the lower level of 1941 a 2 would have been unacceptably close to the rim however tight you pushed the 4. They also made the 4 a little longer for 1942; the 1941 4 is noticeably narrower and would have looked odd between the two round numbers flanking it. It ends up odd because, as precisely as we like to use numismatic language, the moment a DDO starts affecting the date only we begin calling it an Overdate anyway.
I'm not too good on varieties but would this be classified as the very expensive 1942/1? Or are there different degrees to it like the 1955 cent?
Both Philadelphia and Denver coins are known with the overdate. The Philly coin is a much more physically prominent overdate and has a bigger rep, while the Denver one is a lot more subtle as Treashunt's images show. Both are pricey in Mint State but the Philly coin gets better press.
I've GOT to re-image mine. The images are too small. You can see the overdate but not well enough (not like the pics in this thread). A lot of my images were done with a point-and-shoot and size was always an issue. My P&S was only 3.2 mb. It was macro-capable but that didn't help that much.
There was only one 42/1 DDO die used in Philadelphia and only one used in Denver. The "different degrees" of 1955 (and 1972 and others) is due to several DIFFERENT doubled dies being created and used. For example in 1972 there are what 7 different DDO dies? Not to mention the DDO master die that results in doubling on a LOT of 1972 cents.
