In 1922 the United States struck cents at exactly one mint. Philadelphia made none, San Francisco made none, and Denver made 7,160,000, every one of them carrying a D. Except that some of them do not: Denver's dies were worn, filled and over-polished that year, and a portion of the coins left the presses with a mintmark too faint to see or missing entirely. The result is the register's ghost: a cent that looks like it came from a mint that struck nothing that year.
The hobby's referees drew the line with die forensics. Coins with a weak or partial D exist from several die pairings and carry modest premiums. The recognized No D variety comes from one pairing only, identifiable by a missing mintmark combined with a sharp, well-struck reverse, and that combination is the whole attribution. The official mintage of the No D is nothing at all: it lives inside Denver's 7,160,000, a famous coin the mintage column cannot see.
The obvious fraud, shaving the D off an ordinary 1922-D, produces exactly the wrong coin: the genuine variety is defined by its strong reverse, and most removed-mintmark fakes start from worn coins with mushy reverses. The attribution standard does the catching.
| Issue | Mint | Mintage |
|---|---|---|
| 1922-D Lincoln Wheat Cent | Denver | 7,160,000 |
Mintage figures: United States Mint (Annual Report of the Director of the Mint), Royal Canadian Mint records, and — for the 1935 banknote issue — Bank of Canada printage records as published in the Charlton Standard Catalogue of Canadian Government Paper Money, cross-checked across independent published references. Specifications: United States Mint coin specifications.