DC-1c-2008-01R Die Chip

Description

Marking the very last year of Frank Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse design, this 2008 Philadelphia Mint cent carries the first documented reverse die chip for that date, cataloged by the Cuds on Coins research team with no other known cross-references. The 2008 date holds special significance as the farewell year for a reverse design, which had been in continuous production since 1959 — making this die chip a late-era artifact from the last of the Memorial Cents. A die chip is a microscale die failure where a small piece of the hardened die surface fractures and detaches, leaving a cavity in the die that produces a corresponding raised bump on every coin struck thereafter. The "01R" designation indicates this is the first cataloged reverse die chip for the 2008-P cent. The transition from the Memorial reverse to the four 2009 Bicentennial designs was already planned when these 2008 cents were being produced, and Philadelphia's 2008 production volume of approximately 2.56 billion cents represented one of the largest single-year outputs in the denomination's history. That enormous production run consumed thousands of die pairs throughout the year, and the cumulative stress of billions of strikes made die deterioration an inevitable part of the manufacturing process. Reverse die chips on Memorial Cents are particularly interesting to collect because Gasparro's architectural design — with its twelve columns, steps, and the tiny seated Lincoln statue — provides specific locations where chips can be identified and their positions described relative to familiar design landmarks.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Vivien Bullard
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References