I was thinking 09-s cent, then remembered 1838-o half. or was it 1839-o ? whatever, not important, I'm not digging out books now any others besides that oddity ? I'm helping a non collector e -friend evaluate some stuff. I told him any mintmark on 19th century stuff is ALWAYS on the reverse.... I later remembered this exception ! Why did the mint do this, for a year or two, then wait 70 years to do it again ? I guess this might have been the first MM ? I could look it up myself. It's just a bit odd
Okay: Copper: 1909 (Lincoln cent) Silver: 1838 $1/2 New Orleans Gold: 1838 $2 1/2 & $5 C,D,O Nickel: 1968 S And then there is clad coinage: 1968 for the dime & quarter
And why did they do it again for 1-1/2 years on the Walking Liberties (1916/17), then wait another 47 years before the permanent(?) move to the front of the Kennedies?
The 1838-O half was the first, it was released before the gold coins were. It was the first MM which is probably also why they only did it for those first two years. They wanted the mintmark, tried it on the obv, decided they didn't like it and moved it to the reverse. I have no clue why they did it on the obverse of the walkers. Speculation, the area under IGWT is roughly the same size and shape as that below the date on the cent and they tried it for consistancy? Then there is the question as to why they moved them to the obv in 1968? To indicate the composition change? (The mint has always been big on putting something on the coins to indicate a composition change.) Of course that only worked on the Denver coins since Philadelphia didn't use a mintmark. Also there was no change on the five cent piece but the mintmarks moved to the obv there as well.
Since I collect gold from 1838 I first thought that those might fit the bill but as others have posted the Silver from the same year was produced earlier in the year.
I told the dude pretty much right on, with a very few exceptions. Advised him to get Photograde and Redbook, at a used book store and send me photos of anything of interest.
