What percentage of a given year's dies are doubled?

[Robert]

Assuming a "heavy" year for DDs, what percentage of all that year's dies are/were doubled?

Is it something like this:

30,000 obverse dies with 30 being doubled? More than that? Less?

[coppercoins]

It may be possible to assemble a general average, but there's no set percentage from year to year. The general average would be telling of basically nothing. There are a couple of factors that go into having more than other years, such as whether or not there were proofs minted for that year, but there are a number of curiosities that exist for which I do not believe there is a logical, plausible explanation - except possibly that workers come and go, and some of them may have developed personal techniques that allowed for doubled dies...when they left, retired, got fired, someone else moved into the position and changed that habit, thus ending an era. Only a guess, but somewhat logical.

For instance - why is it that 1936-1941 seem to be heavy years for class 6 doubled die reverses, while 1942 is nearly void of them, then they start back up again in 1943? Why are doubled eyelids rather scarce until around 1956, then they become very plentiful for a few years? Why is it that 1995 suddenly because a boom year for doubled die obverses, both P and D mint, while there hadn't been so many DDOs reported in a single year for a long time before that date? Years like 1972 have proported reasoning - the mint employee who filed off the keys on the dies, thus created a number of doubled dies that year.

As for a specific answer, I don't think there is one. Any year can be (and is) much different from the years around it, and certainly has nothing to do with years ten to twenty or more away from it (i.e., 1952 and 1927...completely unrelated).

It is without doubt that there are many different years that have their own characteristics that are shared by few or none others. I don't know if an answer will (or could) ever surface to this.

[coppercoins]

Scratch that, hold it...I re-read your post.

1964P proof dies have the largest percentage for cents - probably over 25 percent of them. Count proof and business strike together, and you have probably 5-10%.

There are over 120 reported dies for 1964P. Probably 20 of them are business strike. That leaves 100 proof dies. Each proof die is reported to have struck about 10,000 coins. For round figures sake, there were 4 million proofs struck that year (actual mintage was around 3.95 million). That would be 400 proof dies total, 100 of which had doubling on them....25 percent.

edited to add....

And the baloney about proof doubled dies being much rarer than business strike doubled dies is just that - baloney. The mintage per die of proof coins is much lower, true...but the key factor that is not being considered is that at least two thirds of all business strike coins see circulation, and many of them are destroyed through attrition (use, damage, sewers, jars, etc.) while almost all of the proof coins are saved. Survival rate....business strike is likely less than 10% in "collectible" condition. Proof is more like 90% in collectible condition.

[Bob P]

Good points Chuck, but I must correct you on one thing (don't hit me!) concerning 1942 Class VI reverses. There are indeed many (at least 6 that I have alone) Class VI doubled die reverses for 1942. That still doesn't explain why they were plentiful during your specific time frames, nor does it explain why there were as many class fours during another.
It sure makes for collectability, but I don't understand why those things are so. An interesting question indeed, but as you stated, I don't know if there can ever be an answer for that.

Bob P