1972 Lincoln Memorial Cent - SKH-1c-1972-06 Spiked Head

Description

Documented just two weeks after SKH-1c-1972-05, the sixth spiked head for the 1972 Philadelphia Lincoln Memorial cent was attributed by the Cuds on Coins team on January 26, 2017. No external cross-references have been established. The rapid succession of the fifth and sixth attributions — both in January 2017 — suggests either a single collector submitting multiple discoveries from an extended search session, or multiple collectors independently submitting specimens around the same time. This clustering pattern is common in variety attribution: awareness of a particular date's potential for specific error types stimulates focused searching among the collector community, leading to concentrated discovery periods. SKH-1c-1972-06 represents a sixth distinct Philadelphia Mint obverse die from 1972 that developed cracking at Lincoln's portrait apex — the deepest point of the die cavity where maximum stress concentration occurs during each striking cycle. The physics of the failure mechanism ensures that while all spiked heads originate from the same fundamental cause (fatigue cracking at the portrait apex), each die produces a spike with unique characteristics determined by local metallurgical conditions: grain orientation, inclusions, prior surface treatments, and the specific thermal history of that individual piece of die steel. These variables combine to produce the distinctive crack geometry that defines each catalog entry as a separate variety worthy of independent documentation.

Cross References

• Cross reference: none. 01/26/2017.

External References