SKH-1c-1971D-21 Spiked Head

Description

Final entry in the current Cuds on Coins spiked head catalog for the 1971-D Lincoln Memorial cent, SKH-1c-1971D-21 was documented on January 4, 2018, completing a discovery sequence that cataloged twenty-one distinct spiked head working dies for this single date and mintmark. This total places the 1971-D at or near the top of all Lincoln Memorial cent dates for spiked head variety production — a distinction earned through the convergence of Denver's massive 1971 mintage, the hundreds of obverse dies that mintage required, and the inherent stress vulnerability at Lincoln's head where high-relief portrait detail creates the fatigue crack conditions that produce spiked heads. Attributed by Cuds on Coins, SKH-1c-1971D-21 closes the current catalog without foreclosing future discoveries: the 1971-D's enormous surviving population means additional spiked head varieties almost certainly exist on dies not yet examined by variety specialists. The twenty-one documented entries represent a lower bound on the true number of 1971-D spiked head dies — each a working die that cracked in service, produced coins bearing its unique spike, and was eventually retired, leaving its struck output distributed across the billions of 1971-D cents in circulation, collections, and accumulations. For the dedicated spiked head collector, completing a twenty-one variety set from a single date offers a self-contained numismatic challenge of considerable depth, requiring patient searching through quantities of a common-date coin to locate, identify, and correctly attribute each distinct crack variety.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Bob Byrd
• Cross reference: none. 01/04/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References