LDB6-1995-002 BIE Die Break

Description

Second BIE die break at Hardy position 6 for the 1995 Philadelphia Lincoln Memorial Cent, cross-referenced with Hardy Index 95P-6SDHM and cataloged on July 17, 2018, by Cuds on Coins. The subtle difference between this entry's Hardy code (6SDHM) and the 6SCHM code shared by other position 6 varieties for this date reveals that the Hardy system uses multi-character suffixes to encode precise sublocation information, with each character representing a progressional narrowing of position within the die face. Position 6 represents a zone further along the LIBERTY inscription than the more commonly populated position 4, and die breaks at this location demonstrate that stress-induced cracking was not confined to a single vulnerable point but occurred across the full inscription span. The 1995 Philadelphia cent benefits from extraordinary collector examination intensity driven by the search for the famous 1995 doubled die obverse, and this heightened scrutiny has yielded a robust catalog of secondary die varieties including BIE breaks at multiple Hardy positions. Two BIE breaks at position 6 early in the documentation sequence suggested additional discoveries were likely as more material was searched — a prediction borne out by subsequent entries that brought the position 6 count higher. The Memorial Cent design era, spanning 1959 through 2008, produced BIE die breaks through the same fundamental mechanism as the preceding Wheat Cent era: cumulative stress cycling in the narrow die ridges between letters of LIBERTY led to crack initiation, propagation, and eventually the gap-filling metal transfer that creates the characteristic raised bar on the struck coin.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Vivien Bullard
• Cross reference: Hardy Index 95P-6SDHM. 07/17/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References