A recent post about a fake 1909-S VDB cent sparked several questions for me and I was hoping someone here might be able to answer them. The thread in question concerned an added mint mark to a genuine 1909 VDB cent and the incorrect placement on the mint mark was the most obvious giveaway that it was a fake. It is well know that there were 4 obverse dies used to create the 1909-S VDB cents. Each die had the mint mark punched in by hand resulting in a slightly different location…and thus slightly different locations for the mint marks on authentic coins. This serves as a common diagnostic for the coin. My question is this…did they use the same 4 obverse dies for the non-VDB cents? As far as I know, there was no obverse changes made to the coin and I can’t imagine that all 4 dies would be worn out with a production of 484,000 coins. If they did use the same dies for the 1.825 million 1909-S cents…did they use more than just these 4 obverse dies (meaning with the increased production…did they need more dies)? If they did, obviously the same mint mark diagnostics would apply to a non-VDB 1909-S cent. If more dies were used, has anyone cataloged the mint mark locations for the non-VDB 1909-S cents? If they same dies were used…is striking 484,000 coins prior to the design change enough to affect the dies significantly? The reason I ask is I wonder if there were any PL 1909-S cents struck since the dies had already been broken in. I would assume the early 1909-S VDB cents had beautiful surfaces because the dies were so fresh.
Somewhere on this forum in the history you can find a very well done thread on 1909 S VDB cents showing all the mint mark positions from the different dies used. It is educational and well worth researching.
I know the mint mark locations of the 1909-S VDB cent. What I am wondering is if the same obverse dies were used for the non-VDB cents...and if so if those are the only dies used for the non-VBD 1909-S cents.
I really thought someone here might be able to answer this question for me concerning the 1909-S dies. I'll bet that one of these guys knows: @Conder101, @Insider, @GDJMSP . You guys are super knowledgeable and tend to know a lot of the history. I'll bet if ole' Clinker was still around he could tell me.
on this page it says die 1 was also used to strike non-vdb cents so you have to look for the added vdb possibility. https://coinweek.com/counterfeits/counterfeit-coin-09-s-vdb/ I doubt that this one die would have been used then to strike all the non-vdb ones, and there seems no general warning to simply look at any 1909 S non-vdb for added initials.
I believe Kasia just did that. If you wish to know all of the details regarding the dies used to strike all of the 1909 cents I'm pretty sure can find them in Lange's book.
