1948 (S) Lincoln Wheat Cent - Repunched Mintmark WRPM-027

Description

Attributed by the Wexler Team, this 1948-S Lincoln Wheat Cent displays a repunched mintmark — the twenty-seventh such variety documented for this date and mint combination. Repunched mintmarks occurred during the era when individual mintmarks were hand-punched into working dies at the branch mint facilities, a process prone to positioning errors that required secondary impressions to correct or reinforce the initial placement. The high sequence number of WRPM-027 reflects the extensive variety research conducted on 1948-S Wheat Cents, where patient die-by-die examination has revealed dozens of distinct mintmark punching variations. Each repunched mintmark is unique to its specific working die, as the hand-punching process produced slightly different results every time — variations in angle, depth, position, and the number of impressions make each RPM a one-of-a-kind die variety. The 1948-S was struck at the San Francisco Mint with a mintage of 81,735,000 cents, a substantial production run that required numerous working dies. San Francisco continued to use hand-punched mintmarks on Lincoln Cents until the mid-1960s, when the Mint transitioned to including the mintmark directly on the master die. The Wexler classification system for repunched mintmarks documents the direction and displacement of the secondary impression relative to the primary — whether the repunching is north, south, east, west, or at an intermediate angle. Collectors pursuing Lincoln Wheat Cent RPM varieties find the late 1940s dates particularly productive hunting grounds, as the combination of high mintage and hand-punched mintmarks produced numerous documented examples across the 1946-1958 date range.

Cross References

• Wexler Variety ID: 1948 S 1¢ WRPM-027

External References