I would like opinions on whether these 5 cents are all large dates. 2 weigh 2.9 grams, the other 3 weigh 3.1 grams.
All large date Go to usacoinbook.com or lincolnresource website and compare. The near bottom left of the 2 before it gets to the bottom bows out and isn't a straight line.
Many people thought that a second 1982 D Small Date Copper would never ever be found. I even said it a few times. We were proven wrong. So.. A third one?
Thank you everyone for the comments. I've always had trouble with large and small dates since the 1960 memorials and my eyes are not getting any better with age lol
The easiest way to tell is by the distance from the rim. It's VERY obvious, the 2 is almost touching the rim on the large date.
that's why it's actually the "small date" versus the "big date". compare the sizes of the two dates and they are different sizes and take up different space. The "1" is about the same location to start, but the big date is larger and thus ends up closer to the rim. So if someone makes a fake small date, the two is usually the wrong size and location too.
The 82 series is the most interesting of the memorial generation. 7 coins were issued and over the decades I have developed my own theories as to why certain things happened during the transition from copper to copper-plated zinc. There is a dearth of information from "official" sources, quite sad actually, so all we can do is use reasoning and deduction. We see masses of 1982P copper cents because they were needed for commerce. All of the testing happened at the Philly mint. The small date came about for the zinc coins, the large date didn't work well with the new planchets. It also allowed the mint to tidy up the masters because they were getting worn out. I believe the P mint started a run with the new planchets and something went wrong. To meet production, they ran with the small date dies intended for the zinc planchets.....thus creating the variety. I believe this run, 1982P SDC, to be the lowest mintage of the 82 series because the mint solved the unknown issue and quickly switched back to zinc. Since Philly was the developer/guinea pig of the transition, I don't believe Denver had any problems and just transitioned straight from copper to zinc. However, they used up their supply of the large date dies (including a lot of copper cents) before transitioning to the small date dies late in the run. For this reason, I believe the 1982D SDZ to be the next lowest mintage. As for the 1982D small date copper - those are purely accidents (errors). There was bound to be a few copper planchets around as Denver produced billions of cents.
The 1982 small date zinc (Philly) is harder to find than the 1982 small date copper (Philly). There are no mintages for the different varieties, only for the total produced.
This is one of my favorite coins in my collection, it was VERY difficult to find for me since 99.99% of these suck when you do find one. This coin is toned, deep red, very hard to photograph inside an airtite.
