Die Set Life Expectancy ?

[Clutchy]

I'm sure the exact numbers varies, but what would be the expentancy of a die set to be ? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000 coins?

[Maineman750]

CPG says 1 million, but I've heard half that from other sources.

[WaterSport]

You talking now, or back in 1909??? in the old days, 350,000 - 400,000 coins were made from a single die.

WS

[GrumpyEd]

For modern cents I think the die life of 500K to a million+ means they only use it for a few days. The modern presses make coins really fast. Maybe a day or 2 days then maybe polish it and use it a day or 2 again and maybe if it's ok another polish or that's the end of it's life. When they pull a die pair they may re-pair them as one die fails before the other and get some extra use from the dies before they scrap them. It's probably a life of only days in use.

I think one of the biggest fallacies of coin collecting was created by TPGs that give "first strike" designations based on a coin being submitted near the release date. It's not a guarantee of the coin being from a fresh die and I think the reason they do it is it's easy for them and they charge extra for the designation. It has more meaning to note the die state but takes more effort for them.
In reality by the time the mint has the first batch ready to ship it's probably a mix of coins from all die states mixed together. During the year they're constantly putting new dies into use so there's almost always going to be mix of coins in different die states. Nothing about die state is guaranteed based on when the coins were released.

[Justafarmer]

Take 1946-S for instance with a mintage of 198,100,000. This is the coin I am working on at the moment. The best I have determined so far Wexler lists 15 DDOs, 14 DDRs, 1 OMM and 80 RPMs for a total of 110 varieties. CONECA lista 8 DDOs, 9 DDRs, 1 OMM and 42 RPMs for a total of 60 varieties and CC Lists 5 DDOs, 4 DDRs 1 OMM and 34 RPMs for a total of 44 varieties. There is some overlap where an RPM or DDO was paired with a DDR or RPM and DDO occur on the same die. So far I have Wexler @ 2, CONECA @ 3, CC @ 4. A simple adjustment for these die pairings put the totals @ Wexler 108, CONECA 57 and CC 41.

Based on 1 million strikes per die
Wexler 54.5% of 1946-S cents are a variety or approx 1 in 2
CONECA 28.8 % of 1946-S cents are a variety or approx 1 in 3
CC 20.7 % of 1946-S coins are a variety or approx 1 in 5

It is true that 1946-S is a treasure trove for searching die varieties. Especially if you add in the different Mint Mark Styles but I believe 1 million strikes per die is a high estimate for this period.

[coppercoins]

First thing you have to realize is that dies do not come in pairs. They are changed out individually when they need to be changed.

Second thing is that it depends on the series and composition being struck as to how many strikes a die can muster. They are all very different from one another.

Third thing is that some dies lasted for a couple thousand strikes and some lasted for hundreds of thousands of strikes.

Using a number of die varieties known to compute the number of dies used in a year is faulty at best. It's apples and oranges.

The only year I had supported numbers for is 1956. A total of around 640 obverse dies and 430 reverse dies were used to strike all cents that year. I suspect the number was lower in 1946 and higher in 1980.

Until someone digs into the bowels of the mint reports, nobody can tell for sure how many dies were used to strike any coins. There are way too many variables to realistically compute the number from any gathered data. The numbers are in the reports if anyone has the access to acquire them.

[Justafarmer]

Being that I know of no physical reason that a variety die's performance (life expectancy) would be inferior to that of a normal die I will have to respectfully disagree with your above statement as far as comparing apple to oranges. Certainly drawing conclusions from a sample seleceted based on a predetermined characteristic will produce some bias but with it representing such a large percentage of the entire population I don't think any information extrapulated from here would produce much deviation from what should be expected.

Your information given for dies in 1956 does suggest that reverse dies enjoy approximately a 50% longer production life than obverse dies. Were those numbers for all coins produced in 1956 - P&D or just P mint coinage?