1918-D Repunched Mintmark WRPM-002

Description

Second cataloged repunched mintmark for the 1918 Denver Mint Lincoln Wheat Cent, Wexler designation 1918-D 1¢ WRPM-002 documents another instance of mintmark misalignment during die preparation for this World War I-era date. With no other known cross-references, this variety exists solely within the Wexler attribution system. The presence of at least two documented RPMs for the 1918-D — alongside the five documented for the same date in the WRPM series — confirms that mintmark punching issues were a regular occurrence during the wartime period. During World War I, the United States Mint operated under heightened production pressure as the expanding wartime economy demanded increased coinage output. The Denver Mint, established just twelve years earlier in 1906, was still a relatively new facility, and its die supply depended entirely on dies manufactured and mintmark-punched at the Philadelphia Mint before being shipped westward. Each D mintmark was individually punched by hand into working dies using a small steel letter punch, and the ergonomic challenges of this repetitive precision task made occasional misalignment statistically inevitable across hundreds of dies prepared for Denver production. WRPM-002 differs from WRPM-001 in the specific direction, magnitude, and character of the repunching — whether the D shows displacement to the north, south, east, or west, and whether the repunch involved rotation, tilting, or simple translational offset. The Wexler Team catalogs each distinct repunching pattern separately, building a variety-by-variety record that documents the full range of mintmark placement variation produced during early twentieth-century die preparation.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Lloyd Hanson Cross References: None known
• None known; Wexler Variety ID: 1918-D 1¢ WRPM-002
• Expert attribution by Wexler Team

External References