I am researching (unsuccessfully) the history of the 1918/7-D Buffalo Nickel. Help please. I cannot find information on which mint created the overdate, and when. Philidelphia contolled the dies; my guess is the overdate occured late in the year to meet quotas, and there was an unused 1917? Just speculation. Thank you for any help.
I'm not sure if I understand - is there some question that they weren't minted in Denver? If you're asking about the die itself, I don't think there's any question that the die originated in Philadelphia. Denver had no die making capability until 1996 so they would not have been repunching the date. I'm no expert in mint history, but to me it seems more likely that the overdate die was created in late 1917 or early 1918 when a mint worker was stuck on the previous year (sort of like when you write a check in January and put the wrong year). I don't know what it was like in 1918 but in the early 1900s the die destruction records for the previous year's dies were all in early January, and they seemed to be competent with accounting for all the previous year's dies. It seems unlikely that a 1917 obverse die would still be laying around in late 1918. Just speculation also.
@KBBPLL has given some great insight and info…but it stands to reason that the die produced in Philadelphia would have been a “working die” which was then shipped to Denver. Then the Denver Mint would have added their mint mark. I suppose Philly could have already added the Denver mint mark before shipping, since they controlled the dies…imo…Spark
As far as I know, Philadelphia also added all mint marks to the dies. They were not shipping "blank" reverse dies to the branch mints. Those mints had no ability (or authority) to make or modify the coin dies.
Ron Pope the #1 authority on this series is no longer with us, or I would of invited him into this thread. Ron passed a little over a year ago. However you can find this answer as well others in his book. I highly recommend the references. The mm were added in Philadelphia, however that does mean a die and tool maker wasn't employed at the Mint. Think about it
RPM's happened when the MM was punched into the die. These were hand punched and any bounce when they were struck would leave a partial MM out of orientation. Also, if the MM wasn't struck deep enough. It would take a second strike to try and deepen the mark. This tended to make a second MM. OMM's are completely different. The first MM would have to be removed as best as possible, and the correct MM added to the die face. A lot of times the first MM weren't completely removed.
What I have heard is, either it was done intentionally as a wartime effort to conserve die steel (which would explain the 1918/7-S quarter and the 1942/1 Mercs as well) or it was done by a relatively inexperienced wartime Mint hire. I am not sure if there is any truth to these hypotheses. However - we do know that the 1918/7-D Buffalo die was used to the point of heavy die wear, so tens of thousands of coins were struck (if not over 100k).
Maybe nit-picking but I have always considered this variety technically to be a doubled die - not a Repunched Date. For the Buffalo Nickel the date was not hand-punched into the working die.
The way I remembered it was the mint workers went off to fight in the war and the temps didn’t really know what they were doing.
Thats interesting, I never thought about when the Mint left the hand punching digits in the past. Unless it is possible for a working die to be softened add the 8 and reharden the die. I would also agree that it should be a Doubled Die.
