SKH-1c-2004D-01 Spiked Head

Description

Establishing the sole documented spiked head for the 2004 Denver Mint Lincoln Memorial Cent, SKH-1c-2004D-01 was cataloged on July 10, 2016, by Cuds on Coins. Denver Mint spiked heads on Memorial Cents appear less frequently in die variety catalogs than Philadelphia examples, and a single entry for the 2004-D represents the entirety of documented die clash events producing visible spikes for this date and mint combination. The die clash mechanism at Denver operates identically to Philadelphia — a planchet feed failure during high-speed coining allows the obverse and reverse dies to strike each other, transferring Memorial reverse elements into the obverse die — but Denver's documentation tends to be sparser, possibly because fewer Denver-struck cents have been examined systematically for spiked heads by the variety-hunting community. The 2004-D cent was produced during the final years of the Memorial reverse, with only a few more Denver Mint Memorial Cents remaining before the transition to the 2009 bicentennial designs. Frank Gasparro's Memorial reverse, approaching its forty-sixth year of continuous production by 2004, had been refined to a mature state where die production was routine. As the -01 entry, this variety anchors the 2004-D spiked head catalog and serves as the sole reference point for die clash documentation on Denver's 2004 cent production. The relatively early cataloging date of July 2016 suggests this was among the first systematic examinations of 2004-D cents for spiked head varieties.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Tom Koolick
• Cross reference: none. 07/10/2016.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References