My Whitman folders show both small and large date varieties for the 1970 S Lincoln cent. Apparently the small date is much more rare than the large. The rare times I've even seen it for sale it's always been in proof. Does it even exist in business strike? Also, anyone know why there were two date varities for this year?
1960, 1970, and 1982 all years that had both small and large date varieties. I believe that it was due to changes made in mid printing during those years, like when they changed from copper to plated zinc coins in 1982. But I wouldn't swear to that. I have a 1960 mint set that has the small date included and a 1970 mint set that also includes the small date variety. Check this set out: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230000200633&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWN:IT&rd=1
That 70S small and large date thing is really irritating. Actually there are numerous dates with size varieties in all denomiations of coins. In most cases they are really apparent such as the 82 Lincoln Cent small and large. When I first heard about the 70S I started to search $50 bags of cents looking for them. I ended up with about 5 rolls of the 70S cents in almost mint condition. I could never tell the large from the small until I ended up buying a few small dates at coin shows. The Red Book has a small piture of the two. Even in Looking Through Lincolns book from that guy that has the coppercoins.com web site it is difficult to tell the difference. You can kind of tell which is which ifyou buy one in MS condition but not easily. My question is who is the nut that first spent the time finding that?
The 70 small date is one of the easiest varieties to spot if you know the trick. It can even be seen with the naked eye. The key is knowing where to look. The PickUp Point is the word Liberty. If Liberty is bold and well struck, the coin is a large date. However on all SMALL dates exhibit a weak, washed out Liberty. You don't have to look at the date at all. This is true for both the proof and bu varieities. Don't worry about spliting hairs on this one. The weakly struck Liberty is very obvious. Happy cherrypicking! Nick
If you look at the strenght of the strike in LIBERTY you are going to miss some small dates. About 3% of sm dt mint set coins have a well defined LIBERTY. Looking at the height of the 7 works if you have a good eye but this one fools me frequently. There is no crease in the 7 on the small date and some swear by this but I don't have enough experience to know if it always works or not. The easiest wat for me is to look at the bottom loop of the 9. On the large date this points down toward the mint mark and on the small date it is nearly horizontal. This works every time for the mint state coins. While it does work for the proofs as well the difference is less dramatic. OK. changed it back.
Cool... may end up just buying it... it seems to be rarer than the large date but nobody's exactly sure how rare because the mint didn't keep records of how much of each was minted. I'ts possible it's not as rare as people think and may just be heavily hoarded, lol. I know that on the 1960 and 1982 both date varieties are about as common as the other. I did one time see one on ebay, a proof that someone had cleaned, almost got it, was seeling for $35... but honestly if I'm spending that much for a single coin I'd rather have a business strike, ecen a circulated one, over a cleaned proof that would keep drawing attention to how almost good it is, lol. I have some cleaned and damage coins in my collection, but these are old ones that are too rare and expesnive to reasonably get better, yet. Can't see doing that for a coin less than 50 years old. This one is bugging the heck out of me because it's the only Lincoln cent (besides the 2006 Philadelphia, which I expect to find soon) since 1932 I don't have in my collection. That hole in the Whitman folder is mocking me! Will break down and buy it soon I'm sure. Did find a 1970 S in circulation recently but it turned out to be the large date.
The small date did appear in circulation but few were found. Even today you see very few of these in lower than AU so the implication is that most came from mint sets. There were two million mint sets minted and a little more than 10% were small dates (~10.5%). Lots of these have been lost or destroyed over the years since this coin got little attention in the early days. In 1971 a roll of '60 sm dts were about $300, '60-D was $20 and the '70-S was about $50. Few people thought the '70 coin had much potential since the supply just dwarfed the demand and they were easily found in mint sets which were being cut up in large numbers for the '70-D half dollar. Even as late as the early '80's a roll of these was as little as a couple hundred dollars. Over the years a great deal has changed. Not only have many of these been lost and destroyed but the demand has continued to grow. '70 mint sets are no longer a prime source for the coins because most of these sets no longer exist and the ones that do have been picked over and the small dates removed. There just aren't any big hordes of these so the small demand is not as easily satisfied. The '60 sm dt roll has lost about half its value from the early '70's and the '60-D sm dt is so cheap that it can't even be shipped. It sells for 80c if you can find a buyer. Ironically the '60-D lg dt sells for more!. The '70-S sm dt wholesales at $1,850 per roll now. This coin comes very nice in the mint set but only rarely. They have suffered a lot of corroision in the last several years so gems are not so easy as they once were. The average grade was about the same as the large date at MS-64 but now most would charitably be described as MS-63. I've never seen one in PL but nice example are very gemmy. There are probably thousands remaining in circulation and perhaps 100,000 AU/ Uncs already removed. There may be about 100,000 surviving from mint sets and 10,000 still in the sets but the bulk of these are in sets still in the possession of the original purchaser and are not seen in the marketplace except as they are sold a few at a time over the years. I would consider the coin nearly fully priced except that they are very widely distributed and that there are still lots more collections of the wheat cents than of the memorials. They are probably a good buy in choice condition and the lower gem grades but you might want to avoid the highest grades unless you feel comfortable with them or need it for a collection.
When collecting by series usually my goal is to first just finish it, then work on upgrading some of the lower grade ones in the collection. Shouldn't be too hard to find this in AU or so for a reasonable price. I'm trying to get the earlier end finished, and have a lot of the rarer ones to worry about, so don't want to go overboard on the 1970 for sake of filling a hole, lol. Will see what I can find.
Where did you get this info from? Not saying you're wrong but this isn't my first rodeo. I've been doing this for a long time and every 70 small date I've ever seen....100% of them...exhibited a weakly struck liberty. I'd be very interested to learn something new, here. Nick
I've always heard the 7 with the small-date has a seam where the two sections of the seven come togeter, vs. the smooth connection of the large date. See below... Bone
"Where did you get this info from? Not saying you're wrong but this isn't my first rodeo. I've been doing this for a long time and every 70 small date I've ever seen....100% of them...exhibited a weakly struck liberty. I'd be very interested to learn something new, here." A buddy traded me the '70-S Lincolns from about 1,000 mint sets because I was trying to put together some rolls of the S/S coin many years back. (Got 3 rolls by the way). These were supposed to have had all the small dates removed so I wasn't really looking for them but after getting most of the way through I found one and then two more. It took a while to figure out what were different with these but then I noticed that they all had a pretty sharp LIBERTY. The letters were a little thinner but they stood up about as high as any other large date. I did eventually learn that the guy who separated these looked at the strenght of the motto. There should have been about 100 small dates in this batch and he missed three. Ironically, while these coins were generally well struck none were nice and they all had other problems.
OOPS, I got it backward. The LARGE-DATE has the seam. And yes, your spot-on the small date has the WEAK LIBERTY. My Bad B
I've found a number of them when I was in Hawaii and they were heavily circulated. In fact Hawaii is the place for s mint coins. They get sent out there and circulate all over the island almost never leaving with the tourists.
Well I guess as far as a small date that has a bold liberty....I'll believe it when i see it in one of the leading slabs. I see ANACS NGC and PCGS at all the major shows several times per year. I'll try to remember to ask them about this...maybe they'll be at the upcoming Memphis show. Nick
Here's what Charles Daughtrey has to say about using LIBERTY as a marker... http://www.coppercoins.com/lincoln/1970/1970comparison.html
