Rotated and Position Mint Mark Varities

[Pat]

Is there any value to rotated Mint Marks and position of the Mint Marks, if so to what degrees of position and rotation? This is slight, I would say it's rotated only because out of 3 rolls of 51's this is the only one like this.. But that's no where a official survey..

[Shingpumps]

That's pretty close of a punch. Never seen it that close on a single.

[rockdude]

What would you say about the distance of the m/m on this coin?

[mustbebob]

According to the US Mint...any place under the date is considered a normal mint mark punch. Some rotation of the MM can be expected since they were all hand punched prior to 1990. When a mintmark is over 45 degrees rotated, it does have some collector interest. Also, horizontal mint mark punches like those seen in 09 and 61 have extreme collector interest.
Pat...as far as your pic of the 56D...did you check it for the seperate D south (RPM-008)?

[DWK]

Gee Pat. I like the pretty green colors. Did you get that coin for xmas?

[dglotzbach]

Pat & Rockdude - neat examples from both of you on how far a MM can wander. In other threads here I've seen photo's posted with the MM down at the other extreme, toward Lincoln's vest and the edge of coin. I know how how it is sometimes for me to hit a nail with a hammer (just ask my thumb), and I can only guess how hard it is to manually align & set a MM punch in a die.

It would be interesting to learn how many dies the mint had to throw out back in the day when the MM was set manually and the mint worker "missed"... lucky for variety/error hunters that apparently much of the time they just moved the punch a tad and took another whack at it and called it "good enough for government work"...