1943-S Doubled Die Obverse DDO-012

Description

Medium spread on LIBERTY producing a half-height vertical bar between the original and doubled impressions characterizes this twelfth documented doubled die obverse for the 1943 San Francisco Mint Washington Silver Quarter. The 1/2 vertical bar descriptor — indicating the doubled image creates a secondary vertical stroke spanning approximately half the letter height — distinguishes DDO-012 from the 3/4 bar seen on DDO-009 and the full bar on DDO-007 for the same date. VarietyVista catalogs this under UVC-0362 with DMR-013, tracking three die stages: Stage A in Early Die State (unconfirmed), Stage B where obverse and reverse are in Mid Die State, and Stage C in Late Die State (unconfirmed). Twelve documented doubled die obverses for the 1943-S Washington Quarter represent extraordinary variety density for a single date, reflecting the intense study applied to wartime silver quarters. San Francisco struck 21.7 million quarters in 1943 while simultaneously producing coins for wartime needs across the Pacific theater. The 90% silver quarters weighed 6.25 grams each, and the LIBERTY inscription — positioned on a curved baseline following the contour of Washington's portrait — proves exceptionally sensitive to hub doubling, with the varying letter heights providing visual benchmarks for measuring the vertical extent of the spread.

Die Markers

• UVC-0362
• DMR-013
• Stage A:
• EDS (unconfirmed)
• Stage B:
• Obverse and Reverse are MDS
• Stage C:
• LDS (unconfirmed)

Attribution History

• Discovered by Lee Hiemke
• Expert attribution by VarietyVista

External References