My son found a 1974 penny with a very low D. He has sorted 10's of thousands of pennies and we have not seen one like this before. Our local dealer suggested we check this website to see if anyone had either? Thanks for your replies.
Welcome to the neighborhood! In those days, mintmarks were placed on the die by hand, and they could be all over the place. It was relatively easy for them to align the mintmark, horizontally, for the Lincoln because they used the 2nd & 3rd digits of the date for reference but the vertical alignment was a little bit of guesswork. If you want to get an idea of how erratic the placement could be, take a look at a lot of the 70's half dollars. There isn't any lettering or date to use as a reference, so the mintmark could be close to Kennedy's neck, further to the right or high or low. Chris
That is a good example of the human element in the coin-making process, something we have a lot less off these days.
