I know I'm an armature on the hopes of finding a really good one but I looked over this a few times and I now think I found one am I right?
It doesn't look like it to me. Maybe you should ask USMC60. He tends to make up his own definitions for things. Chris
Keep in mind a hit can happen on RPMs, it does happen. This is what a normal mintmark for 1971-D should look like. Compare yours disregarding the PMD hit on yours. Remember that some mintmarks appear slightly different depending on working dies. If you see split serifs or lots of light extra material inside the D then you may have an RPM.
You learn something new each day the d looks like it was stamp in parts hey not sure what a hit is I'll look that up and rpm too thanks for informing me on this stuff
Hit is post mind damage, like a nick on the mintmark. Before 1990 they had to manually punch in the mintmark into every working die, to punch it in yu had to hit it with a mallot multiple times. When the mallot moved in between hitting a repunched mintmark (RPM) is formed.
Well, almost! Most RPM's are caused when the diesinker taps the letter punch lightly to ensure placing it in the correct position. In some cases, if the position was wrong, the diesinker might polish it out, but in other cases, they just repositioned the punch and struck over the incorrect position. Chris