Ok Was curious as for an explanation on why it seems that Denver mint was using mianly copper and Phili was mainly zinc. Working on putting some rolls together and last night I did 82's. The following is the numbers I came up with: QTY. 1982-D copper 243 1982-D zinc LG 30 1982-D zinc SM 26 1982 copper LG 32 1982 copper SM 26 1982 zinc LG 147 1982 zinc SM 93 Does these numbers seem right? When I look at Redbook it only tells mintage for the mint not material. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
At the time they were being distributed there always appears that some D's are in the West and the P's, are in the Middle and East states. Not completely true all the time but that is what I've noticed most of the time. From where your at and the time frame from 82 to present, it is really difficult to know why your getting one over the other. Of course you may have a criminal in the area that robbed the Denver Mint of a pile of pennies and took them to your area.
The simple answer is that the two mints did not switch lg/sm date or copper/zinc at the same time as each other. Denver switched to zinc later in the year than Philadelphia did and they didn't start using the small date des until after they made the switch. Philadelphia switched to zinc earlier and while they were still using both large and small date dies.
here is some more information the mint made 1982 pennies at the 4 mints - Phil, Denver, West Point and San Fransico. So actually no one knows when the switch was done. So the 1.5 billion pennies minted at San Fransico are probably still on the west coast making you think they traveled from Phil. The zinc pennies from West Point are mixed in with the Phil & San Fran cents so no one will ever know. here is the rest of the story from David Lange at NGC http://www.ngccoin.com/news/viewarticle.aspx?NewsletterNewsArticleID=195 here is the 1982 mintage for all 4 mints
No, back then the west point mint produced cents for circulation. They just didn't have mint marks so there's no way to distinguish them from Philadelphia minted cents.
FYI Did a quick calculation for West Point and San Fransico mints that made pennies for circulation From 1975 to 1986 West Point made almost 18 billion From 1978 to 1983 San Fransico made 4.8 billion of course you have to subtract this amount from the Phil total to give more accurate totals- just like the last post, the mint didnt put mint marks on these
Back to your original statement. It is really to difficult to tell why in your area after all these years, one is more prevalent than others. Regardless of how many of each were made, for some reason there are more of one kind in some places and more of another in other areas. From the left side of the screen where it states where your at, That too would have little effects on why one type and not others. I doubt anyone knows how many are shipped to your place, from which Mint, are still there, have returned, etc. And too you said last night. This would indicate over 25 years later so even more uncertainty.
