1925 Lincoln Wheat Cent Improper Alloy Mix

Description

This 1925 Lincoln Wheat cent exhibits an improper alloy mix, known among collectors as a "woodgrain" or "woody" cent. The graining runs southwest to northeast on the obverse and northwest to southeast on the reverse. The effect originates when the copper and the tin and zinc components of the bronze alloy are not brought into uniform solution during ingot preparation, leaving compositional streaks in the metal. Rolling the ingot into strip stretches those streaks into parallel bands, and the differing grain directions on the two faces record the orientation of the planchet relative to the rolling direction. Philadelphia struck 139,949,000 cents in 1925.