1945-S Repunched Mintmark RPM-001

Description

Carrying the primary repunched mintmark designation for the 1945-S Mercury dime, RPM-001 documents an S/S/S triple mintmark impression with secondary positions displaced both north and south from the final placement. Adolph A. Weinman's Mercury dime — more accurately a Winged Liberty Head design — features the mintmark on the reverse near the base of the fasces, where the small S punch was applied by hand into each working die. The S/S/S notation indicates the mintmark was punched at least three times, with one secondary impression visible north of the final position and another south, creating a vertically spread cluster of overlapping S impressions. The additional notation MMS-006 (Ball Serif) identifies the specific mintmark punch style used — the ball serif S features rounded terminals on the letter's curves rather than the more angular serifs found on other mintmark punch varieties. San Francisco struck approximately 41.92 million Mercury dimes in 1945, the final year of the design before its replacement by John R. Sinnock's Roosevelt dime in 1946. The wartime context of 1945 production saw the Mint operating at accelerated capacity, and the hand-punching of mintmarks under production pressure increased the likelihood of positional errors that produced repunched mintmarks. As RPM-001, this represents the most prominent or first-documented repunched mintmark for the 1945-S Mercury dime, and the triple punching with both northward and southward displacement makes it one of the more dramatic RPM varieties in the series. The Mercury dime's small diameter (17.9mm) and the correspondingly small mintmark size require higher magnification for examination — at least 20x is recommended to clearly resolve the three S impressions and their directional displacement, with particular attention to the ball serif terminals that confirm the MMS-006 punch identification.

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