1956 Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-005

Description

Fifth in the Wexler Team's DDO inventory for the 1956 Lincoln wheat cent, WDDO-005 carries the reference designation 1956 1¢ WDDO-005 with no supplementary cross-references in the CONECA or Fivaz-Stanton catalogs. The Philadelphia Mint struck 420.7 million cents in 1956, continuing the high-volume production that characterized the postwar decades as the American economy expanded and demand for circulating coinage grew steadily. Hub doubling on 1956 wheat cents is documented across at least five obverse die varieties, reflecting the statistical inevitability that a fraction of the working dies used across hundreds of die pairs would exhibit some degree of hub misalignment. The wheat ears reverse designed by Victor David Brenner had been in production for 47 years by 1956, and the master hub and associated tooling were well established, yet each individual working die was still created through a hubbing process where misalignment could occur. Late-date wheat cents (1955-1958) have received sustained attention from variety specialists because the series' conclusion in 1958 creates a natural collecting boundary, and completist set builders need every documented variety to claim full coverage. WDDO-005 sits in the middle of the 1956 DDO census, flanked by both earlier and later listings that document different hub misalignment events on different working dies. Collectors should examine LIBERTY, the date, and IN GOD WE TRUST for evidence of doubling, using at least 7x magnification to detect the separation or extra thickness characteristic of genuine hub doubling. The specific spread direction and most prominently affected elements define WDDO-005's identity within the five-variety 1956 DDO group.

Attribution History

• Wexler Variety ID: 1956 1¢ WDDO-005
• Expert attribution by Wexler Team

External References