SKH-1C-2014-01 Spike Head

Description

Opening the spike head census for the 2014 Philadelphia Lincoln Shield cent, SKH-1C-2014-01 establishes the inaugural die crack entry for this production year. The 2014 date represents a relatively early entry in the Shield cent spike head census, which began with the design's introduction in 2010 and has grown substantially in subsequent years as collector awareness and reporting have increased. Philadelphia struck approximately 3.99 billion cents in 2014, one of the higher annual cent production figures in recent history, providing the massive die consumption that statistically guarantees spike head occurrences. The Lincoln Shield cent obverse retains the essential elements of Victor David Brenner's original 1909 portrait, with refinements accumulated through over a century of production, while the reverse features Lyndall Bass's Union Shield design introduced in 2010. Spike heads form through the characteristic mechanism of fatigue cracking at the crown of Lincoln's head, where the fine hair detail creates stress concentration points in the die steel. As a working die cycles through hundreds of thousands of strikes, micro-cracks initiate at these stress risers and propagate outward through the field, eventually reaching the die surface and creating a recessed channel that produces the raised spike on struck coins. The first spike head cataloged for any given year is particularly interesting from a die study perspective, as it may represent either one of the earliest die failures in that year's production or simply the first discovery reported to the attribution service. As the sole 2014 entry at the time of cataloging, SKH-1C-2014-01 may underrepresent the actual number of spike head dies from that production year, since earlier years were less systematically surveyed. Identification requires only low magnification — typically 3-5x — focused on the area above Lincoln's hairline.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Sean O’Connell
• SKH-1C-2014-01
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References