1949 (D) Lincoln Wheat Cent - Repunched Mintmark WRPM-041

Description

Currently sitting at the frontier of the Wexler catalog for the 1949-D Lincoln Wheat Cent, WRPM-041 represents the highest-numbered repunched mint mark documented for this date — though the catalog remains open to future additions as researchers continue examining coins from this Denver issue. Attributed under Wexler Variety ID 1949-D 1¢ WRPM-041 by the Wexler Team, the variety documents a working die on which the D mint mark was applied at least twice, leaving overlapping impressions that constitute a unique diagnostic fingerprint for that die. Forty-one RPMs cataloged for the 1949-D underscores how profoundly the hand-punch era shaped die variety collecting — no repunched mint marks have been created on U.S. coins since 1989, when the Mint began incorporating mint marks into the master die via hubbing, making RPMs a finite and fully historical category. The 1949 recession left its mark on mintage figures but not variety density, confirming that the rate of repunching per die was a function of the manual process itself rather than total production volume. No additional cross-references beyond the Wexler system are published for this final entry in the current 1949-D RPM sequence.

Cross References

• None known; Wexler Variety ID: 1949-D 1¢ WRPM-041

External References