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Message:: [QUOTE="Hobo, post: 1070918, member: 11521"] You must understand the coin-making process first. Cutting to the chase, dies strike coins. Dies have the reverse image of the coin. What is below the surface of a die produces a raised element on the coin. Mintmarks were hand-punched before about 1990. Sometimes a mintmark was punched twice. (Perhaps the punch setter was not happy with the depth of the MM, or he punched the MM at an angle the first time, etc.) All working dies used to be produced in Philadelphia. Those going to Denver got punched with a 'D' mintmark and those going to San Francisco got punched with an 'S' mintmark. (Those dies to be used in Philadelphia did not get a mintmark.) On rare occasions a die with a 'D' mintmark was repunched with an 'S' (or vice versa). Who knows why? It could have been an accident or maybe it was done deliberately. Perhaps they prepared too many dies for Denver and not enough for San Francisco. I don't know. Before 1909 dates were hand-punched into the Working Dies. Occasionally the date (sometimes just a digit or two, sometimes the entire date) was repunched. Sometimes the date was deliberately repunched (e.g., a perfectly fine die left over from a previous year being was with the current date). Other times the overdate happened by accident (e.g., 1918/7 Buffalo Nickel and 1942/1 Mercury Dime) when Working Hubs with different dates were used to create Working Dies. [/QUOTE]