I bought these two Lincoln cents in 1990 from my old friend Mike. 18 years later, I met Mike at the ANA Baltimore show. We had not spoken for 18 years & it certainly was great to renew our old friendship! Both Lincolns in this chain-strike mated pair are DSR. Please post photos of your mated pairs & tell us where you got them. Very best regards, collect89
Individual off-center strikes aren't the rarest things in the world, but finding a matched pair is beyond probability. This HAD to have been detected in the Mint when they were stamped and pulled out by a Mint employee. There's little way they could have separately gone through the full minting process and been matched up at a later time.
Noy really they were created at the same time, left the press at the same time, and since they didn't get caught they wound up in the same bag or group of bags and were probably found by a worker at Brinks or one of the other coin rolling services. until recently it was common practice for these employees to simply replace the coins and keep th errors and then sell them to a dealer. The dealer then probably matched up the two from a group lot that he purchased. By the way, does the saddle strike show evidence of one of the two strikes having a rotated reverse? Typically in a multiple die press the dies when mounted should have the two dies 180 degrees off from each other. Since they are offset on this piece I was wondering if they also showed a rotated die error as well.
Hello Conder101, Just like the obverse, the reverse of this saddle strike is DSR and shows the reverse dies 180 degrees from each other. (If they were not, then one of the die pairs would have been striking medal orientation coins). Very best regards, collect89
That's just it, the reverses do appear to be 180 degrees apart from each other, but I don't believe the obverses are. The rotation is slight though and still within mint specs.
