1871 Indian Head Cent Misplaced Date FS-301

Description

Catalogued as FS-301 in the Fivaz-Stanton Cherrypickers' Guide, this 1871 Indian Head cent carries a misplaced date in which the 1 contacts the 7, producing what specialists call the "7 & 1 Touch" variety. Misplaced dates on Indian Head cents arise from the hand-punching process used at the Philadelphia Mint, where each digit was separately struck into the working die by hand, making errors of proximity impossible to correct once the metal was displaced. Here, the 1 was driven too close to the adjacent 7, causing the two digits to overlap at their inner edges. The contact point is visible on well-struck examples without magnification, though a loupe confirms attribution readily. The FS designation cross-references the Cherrypickers' Guide, confirming this as a formally documented variety with an established catalog number. Indian Head cents from 1871 are moderately scarce in their own right, adding numismatic weight to an already desirable misplaced date specimen. The series, designed by Longacre and struck in bronze, continued hand-punched date loglets through the 1870s, making misplaced date varieties a recurring theme in advanced Indian Head cent collecting.

Attribution History

• FS-301