Congratulations on the find! I have always wondered how many DDO 1974-D Kennedy Halves are known to exist becuase I have yet to find one after searching quite a few rolls over the years.
Thanks everybody.I was very excited about finding it. I've searched about 9-10 boxes which contained a lot of 74-Ds. I'm also curious if there is an estimated number of DDOs produced. I believe the double die is produced when the lettering is punched into the die, but someone should be able to give a more accurate answer than that.
I can't help much except to speculate that the incidence in mint sets implies a mintage under about 25,000. This die was most probably then used to strike circulation issues as evidenced by the advanced die state these are sometimes seen in. These dies usually struck around 200,000 coins so this might be a good estimate. So few of these appear in BU rolls or in circulation that the total could be signif- icantly lower however.
It's my understanding that the "doubled-die" error occured (past tense) from multiple 'squeezes' of hub-to-die impressions. That is, the metal the die is made of work hardens too much to fully impress the design elements in one operation. The unfinished die must then be heated to soften the metal again (annealing) then it must be put back in the um, for lack of proper terminology, 'the squeezer.' The doubling, -- as I understand it -- comes from not having the die properly re-aligned for the second squeeze. hopefully someone will come around and give a better explaination of that error and how modern doubling errors occur with the 'single-squeeze' method.
