SKH-1c-2015-09 Spike Head

Description

Documented by the Cuds on Coins attribution service as SKH-1c-2015-09, this spike head variety appears on a 2015 Philadelphia Mint Lincoln Shield cent — one of Lyndall Bass's Shield reverse designs paired with Victor David Brenner's enduring Lincoln portrait obverse. Spike head varieties rank among the most visually striking die deterioration errors on Lincoln cents because of where they occur: a die crack or die chip develops at the top of Lincoln's head, and the resulting raised metal on struck coins appears as a dramatic spike, horn, or antenna projecting upward from the president's cranium. The mechanism is straightforward — under the immense pressures of repeated striking (estimated at 35-60 tons per strike on a modern coining press), stress fractures develop in the die steel, and the area at the apex of Lincoln's head is particularly vulnerable because it represents a high point in the die's incuse cavity where metal fatigue concentrates. Philadelphia produced approximately 4.67 billion cents in 2015, an enormous output requiring thousands of individual die pairs and creating the statistical certainty that some dies would develop characteristic failure patterns before retirement. The 09 suffix in the SKH catalog sequence places this as the ninth documented spike head for the 2015 Philadelphia issue, indicating that the high-volume production generated multiple independent instances of this die failure mode. Collectors searching for spike head varieties should examine the area directly above Lincoln's head under 5-10x magnification — the spike typically appears as a thin raised line or blob extending upward from the hair detail into the field, and its presence on multiple coins from the same die confirms it as a die variety rather than a post-strike damage artifact.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Chris Channel
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References