1956 Lincoln Wheat Cent - Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-009

Description

Portrait doubling on Victor David Brenner's Lincoln design reveals itself through the diagnostic extra eyelid below the normal eyelid on WDDO-009 of the 1956 Philadelphia wheat cent, confirming a hub misalignment that displaced the facial features enough to create a secondary eyelid impression. Die scratches running east-west between the upper O and D in GOD provide the key obverse die marker — incuse lines on the coin tracing a horizontal path through a specific two-letter zone of the motto that fingerprints this particular working die. No significant reverse die markers were noted. The Wexler Team cataloged this as Wexler Variety ID: 1956 1c WDDO-009, with no other known cross-references. Philadelphia struck approximately 420.7 million wheat cents in 1956, the third-to-last year of the wheat-stalk reverse before the Lincoln Memorial design replaced it in 1959. The east-west die scratches between O and D in GOD create a compact diagnostic window — collectors can scan the motto area under moderate magnification, looking for horizontal linear marks in the narrow space between these two adjacent letters. Once located, the die marker confirms the working die identity, and the examiner can proceed to verify the extra eyelid on Lincoln's portrait. The eyelid doubling requires careful angling of the light source to shadow the shallow secondary impression against the primary eyelid ridge, a technique that experienced Lincoln cent variety collectors develop through repeated practice across the many WDDO varieties documented for this denomination.

Cross References

• None known; Wexler Variety ID: 1956 1¢ WDDO-009

External References