Can anyone tell me how to differentiate between the small date and large date varieties of the Lincoln cents (60 & 82)? I did find pictures of the 70S versions at koinpro. I am trying to fill an album up and having hard time differentiating the two. Any good sites with pics would be helpful. Thanks.
in the '82 year, look at the 2 in the date, the large date has more of a curve at the bottom swing on the 2, and the small date is more of a straight line. the '60 date you need to look at the 6. For me, its not always obvious scince it looks like the same 6, just a slight bit bigger. The 6 on the small date has a loop that comes almost to the top of the 9 next to it. The large date 60' has a loop on the 6 that comes to the midpoint of the 9 and has an upper reach that extends further out over the 0. The Red Book, shows examples of the two dates of each year and what to look for. Sorry, i dont have pictures to help, but hope this explanation does help.
I never really took a closeup look either so I tried to take some pictures from my proof sets to show the differences.Daggarjon is right,the best way to see is to visually line up the curly parts of the 6's and 9's.Higher up loop=small date,even with 9's loop=large date.And the up tail on the 6 is a fraction higher . First pic LD Second pic SD.....Third pic=LD SD Hope this works.
Thanks everybody. That helped. Now I just have to find something that weighs grams to differentiate those 82 zinc and copper coins.
unless they are very high grade coins, just drop them on a hard surface from a few inches away. the ring of copper and clink of zinc are easily differentiated.
