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1969-S Lincoln Cent Doubled Die
Want to turn one cent into $3,000 overnight?
Just have the kind of luck an unemployed Oregon woman experienced during the spring of
1995. She found a Lincoln cent, struck in 1969 at the San Francisco
Assay Office, that,
because it was struck from an improperly produced die that had a
doubled date and
legends,
makes it one of the most desirable of recent U.S. coins. She sold the coin to a coin
dealer for $3,000!
The Oregon woman, an unemployed coin collector, didn't rely on luck. Instead, she took
information that she had learned as a coin collector - that there is a rare and valuable
coin that collectors call a 1969-S Lincoln, Doubled Die cent - and used that knowledge
when examining coins she encountered in circulation.
What makes her coin different from most of the other 540 million 1969-S Lincoln cents
struck is the strongly doubled date and legends caused by a doubled die.
A die is the part of the coining press that forms the images on either side of a coin.
Dies - it takes both obverse and
reverse dies to strike a coin - are composed of a very
hard steel, and bear the appropriate images (though the design elements on a die are
reversed and incused, the complete opposite of what you find on a coin).
A die is formed on a hydraulic press. A blank piece of die steel, its face shaped into
a cone to facilitate receiving design images, is placed into the press, as is a
hub. A hub
looks like a one-sided coin at the end of a cylinder made of hardened steel. The hub is
impressed into the blank die steel, which begins to form the design elements on the new
die. However, because the die steel is so hard, the designs cannot always be completely
formed on the die with one pressing from a hub (the new die shop at the Denver Mint, which
opened May 13, 1996, has state-of-the-art equipment that permits single-impression
hubbing, thus eliminating most doubled dies). The partially completed die must be removed
from the press, heated to soften the metal, cooled, and placed back into the press for a
subsequent hubbing operation.
If the partially completed die is placed back into the press properly, and the same hub
used for the first pressing is used for the second impression, the resultant die should be
normal. However, if the alignment between the hub and partially completed die is
incorrect, or if a different hub is used to complete the die, a doubled die can occur.
That's what happened to the die that struck the Oregon woman's coin. The first pressing
of the hub into the die was normal, but when the die was reinserted into the press for a
second hubbing, either the die or the hub was rotated slightly from its original
alignment. Thus, when the hub and die came together a second time, the design elements
were applied in a slightly different position on the die. (To duplicate what happened,
make fists of both of your hands and bring them together so that the edges along the
thumbs are perfectly aligned. Now twist one of your fists slightly so that the thumbs are
no longer perfectly aligned. If you can imagine your left fist as the die being
hubbed,
and your right fist as the hub being used to complete the hubbing, you can approximate
what occurs during the creation of a doubled die.)
As you can tell by the photograph of the
1969-S Lincoln, Doubled Die cent shown here, you can see two distinct images of LIBERTY
and IN GOD WE TRUST as well as the date. Note, however, that the S Mint mark below the
date is undoubled.
That's because the S Mint mark was punched into the die after the die was otherwise
completed.
The 1969-S Lincoln, Doubled Die cent is a highly desirable coin. The Oregon woman sent
the coin to ANACS, a grading and
authentication service located in Columbus, Ohio, where
its graders authenticated the coin as a doubled die, and assigned a grade of Extremely
Fine 45 to it.
She then began offering the coin to dealers. She first showed the coin to local coin
dealers, but rejected their offers because she felt they were too low. A friend told her
about a coin dealer in Santa Rosa, Calif., so the woman borrowed her friend's phone (she
didn't own a phone herself) and called Jack H. Beymer. Beymer offered the woman $3,000 for
the coin, sight-unseen. He could do that because the woman had had the coin authenticated
by ANACS. It's unlikely he would have offered to buy the coin if it had not been
authenticated.
The woman accepted the offer, and sent it to
Beymer, who in turn sold it to two other
dealers for $3,500. They, in turn, sold it to another dealer for $4,000, and he sold it to
another dealer for $5,250. A collector bought the coin from this Fowler, Calif., dealer
for $6,000.
In a few short months, this 1969-S Lincoln cent went from its
face value of 1 cent to a
value of $6,000, all because a collector knew what she had found, and knew what to do with
the coin (i.e., to get it authenticated, which probably cost her about $20).
The 1969-S Lincoln, Doubled Die cent is the rarest and most valuable of cents struck
since 1959. A very high-grade specimen sold for $16,500 in January 1996, a record price
for the Lincoln cent with Lincoln Memorial reverse.
This 1969-S Lincoln cent is just one of dozens of such coins waiting to be found.
Collectors routinely search their change, particularly when new coins are released, hoping
to find a new doubled die variety. Many of the interesting coins collectors can find in
circulation are doubled die coins.
The current record holder for a Lincoln cent doubled die is a 1958 Lincoln, Doubled Die
cent which brought $25,025 in a private transaction in July 1996. The coin was one of two
found by a collector in a Mint-sewn bag in 1960 at face value. Just two or three specimens
are known, leading collectors to speculate that Mint officials prevented most of them from
entering circulation.
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