SKH-1c-2004-01 Spiked Head

Description

Opening the spiked head catalog for the 2004 Philadelphia Mint Lincoln Memorial Cent, SKH-1c-2004-01 was documented on March 24, 2016, by Cuds on Coins and stands as the earliest cataloged spiked head for this date. The year 2004 is notable in the broader context of Lincoln Cent history as the penultimate year before the United States Mint began planning the four 2009 bicentennial reverse designs commemorating Lincoln's birth, formative years, professional life, and presidency — a program that would temporarily retire the Memorial reverse after fifty years of continuous use. A spiked head on a 2004-P Memorial Cent forms through the standard die clash mechanism: the press cycles without a planchet, the obverse and reverse dies contact each other, and the Lincoln Memorial's architectural elements transfer into the obverse die, producing a raised spike on Lincoln's portrait. As the sole documented spiked head for 2004-P, this variety may represent the only clash event that produced a diagnostically visible spike, or it may simply be the only one discovered so far from a date that has not received exhaustive systematic searching. Philadelphia produced billions of cents in 2004, consuming hundreds of die pairs across the production year. The -01 designation marks this as a foundational entry, the reference point against which any future 2004-P spiked head discoveries would be compared and cataloged.

Attribution History

• Discovered by JC Stevens
• Cross reference: none. 03/24/2016.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References