The truth of 1888 last 8 over 7
1888 Indian head cent working die set #1
Rosetta
1 out of 1.8 billion
There are experts and award winners and authors of articles and books, enthusiasts most of which will fail to comprehend the story this Indian head cent unravels. Many books that will need revisions and some investors will unnecessarily lose faith in the value of their investments.
It will be indisputable that the Indian head cent known as the only overdate of the series, is not an overdate. 1888 last 8 over 7 never was.
It is however not just an extremely rare coin. It is the biproduct of actions taken at the US mint that experts will stubbornly claim could not happen. The identifiable facts around this coin say otherwise.
1887 proof coin used to ensure correct relative size and position of the assumed overdate of 1888 last 8 over 7.
Cleaned VF state (currently designated 1888/7)
The appearance of remnants of Re-punched 8s to the left of 1888/7 date position, visible due to cleaning.
The proof 188 of 1887, overlayed to match 188 of 1888/7.
To my surprise, the 7 didn't need to be altered in order to be in the correct position for the nub.
The yellow highlight inside the top left corner of the 7 is the actual size of the remnant marker left on all 1888/7 examples. leaving the reasonable explanation to assume it was repaired partially.
I will assume that the acceptance of the overdate theory in 1970 was due to the match of the nub to the bottom of a 7 without needing to adjust the 7 spacing from the matched second 8s.
With no other information available in 1970, the position of the nub relative to the 7 would have been incredibly convincing.
It is not known why the re-punched date identifiers inside the loops of the 8s were missed, unless the examples had dirt obscuring their existence.
Discovered April 11th, 2023. A worn 1888 Indian head with damage in and around the third 8.
The investigation into the link between this penny and the famous 1888 last 8 over 7 ends with a simple conclusion.
1888 last 8 over 7 is actually 1888 over a repaired worn broken date 1888 die.
It is an error coin like none in history. With information in scripted across its third 8 that mates it forward to the rarest and most sought-after coins of the Indian head series, and also backwards to an overlooked variety that started as a proof.
From an article on (How to identify a true overdate error coin)
- By Mike Diamond
- Published: Jan 16, 2017, 4 AM
- The Cherrypickers’ Guide to Rare Die Varieties of United States Coins (sixth edition) lists five strong-over-weak 1883/2 Shield 5-cent coin overdates. In addressing these coins, Bernus Turner suggests that the entire face of the working die was ground down to such an extent that only a trace of the original date was left. The nearly-featureless die was then annealed (heat-softened) and rehubbed with the Shield design. After that the later date was punched in over the earlier one. He further suggests that the abraded die face was left slightly convex in order to make hubbing easier and avoid radial bulging of the die neck. In his opinion, these efforts were primarily undertaken to salvage worn, damaged, and slightly cracked working dies.
Since none of the Shield 5-cent coin overdates are associated with a doubled die, this implies that the working hub was placed perfectly over the remnants of the original design during the later hubbing.
Built with Shorthand