SKH-10c-1920D-01 Spiked Head

Description

The sole documented spiked head for the 1920-D Mercury Dime, the SKH-10c-1920D-01 records a die chip creating a raised protrusion from Liberty's cap on the obverse. The 1920-D date comes from the immediate post-World War I era, when the Denver Mint was adjusting production volumes back to peacetime levels after the wartime surge in coinage demand. Adolph A. Weinman's Mercury Dime design, with its distinctive winged Liberty cap — often mistaken for the Roman god Mercury, hence the popular series name — features a high-relief portrait that creates stress concentrations in the die steel at the cap's apex. Spiked heads form when this stressed area develops a chip or crack, allowing metal to flow into the void during striking and creating a spike extending upward from the cap's highest point. The Denver Mint's "D" designation distinguishes this from Philadelphia and San Francisco spiked heads of the same general era, as each mint facility's die preparation and usage patterns could produce different rates of die failure. Attributed by Cuds on Coins with a catalog date of March 2018, the 1920-D spiked head represents one entry in the systematic documentation of this die deterioration phenomenon across all dates and mints of the Mercury Dime series produced from 1916 through 1945.

Attribution History

• Discovered by JC Stevens
• Cross reference: none. 03/30/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References