PART II. Die Varieties:

Rotated Mintmark

Definition:If a mintmark punch is held in a rotated position, the letter punched into the face of the working die will reflect that.  Most rotated mintmarks lean at an angle of no more than 10 degrees.  Severely rotated mintmarks are inevitably repunched.  The one exception applies to mintmarks that look almost the same when rotated 180 degrees.  As a result, inverted S-mintmarks sometimes slip through quality control.

This 1987-D cent has a D-mintmark that is rotated a few degrees clockwise.

A nearly horizontal D-mintmark was corrected by a second punch in the proper orientation.  Photo courtesy of Chuck Daughtrey and coppercoins.com

Discovered only a few years ago by BJ Neff, this 1946 cent carries an S-mintmark that is rotated 180 degrees.