SKH-1c-2022-10 Spiked Head

Description

Completing the 2022 spiked head census at ten cataloged varieties, SKH-1c-2022-10 brings the year's total to a round number that happens to match the inaugural 2010 Shield cent's count of at least eleven. The bookend symmetry — roughly ten spiked heads in the Shield design's first and thirteenth years — brackets a wide range of annual totals including the banner years of 2015 and 2021. Ten varieties from 2022 also means ten distinct working dies that each developed a unique portrait-rim fracture before being retired from service. In aggregate, the spiked head catalog across all Shield cent years likely exceeds two hundred individual entries, making it one of the most extensively documented classes of modern die variety. This breadth of documentation is largely attributable to Cuds on Coins, whose online platform enables collectors worldwide to submit discoveries for classification. The 2022 cent — Philadelphia, copper-plated zinc, 19mm, no mintmark — carried forward the same obverse and reverse designs that had been in continuous production since 2010. As the final 2022 entry, SKH-1c-2022-10 closes the year's chapter and sets the stage for continued cataloging in subsequent years.

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