1963 Doubled Die Obverse WDDO-028

Description

Cataloged as the twenty-eighth doubled die obverse for the 1963 P-mint Lincoln Memorial Cent, WDDO-028 was produced when a working die at the Philadelphia Mint received a misaligned hub impression during manufacture, permanently encoding a secondary image in the die steel. The deep catalog of DDO varieties for this date is a direct consequence of the scale of production: 754,110,000 business-strike cents left the Philadelphia presses in 1963, each one bearing the design from one of the many obverse working dies that were manufactured and consumed during the year. The multi-impression hubbing process used to create each die involved removing the die from the press between impressions for annealing, then re-seating it for the next application of the hub, and any fractional shift during re-seating created the misalignment that variety collectors detect under magnification. Despite the large number of documented DDO varieties for 1963, each one represents a unique die with its own combination of doubling characteristics and surface features, and the challenge for collectors lies in matching observed attributes to the correct catalog entry. The standard 95% copper and 5% zinc planchet composition gives 1963 cents their characteristic copper color, ranging from full red in uncirculated condition to various shades of brown as the surface oxidizes over time. The coin bears no mint mark and carries Brenner's obverse portrait paired with Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse. Without published die marker details, attribution of WDDO-028 proceeds through comparison of the doubling pattern against authenticated reference material in the Wexler Doubled Die Files.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Wexler Team

External References