Lincoln Shield Cents 2010 to Date

The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 did more than create the dollar series. It also told the Mint that cents made after 2009 must carry a design standing for Lincoln's preservation of the Union. In April 2009 the two advisory panels split: the Commission of Fine Arts picked a design of bound wheat stalks, while the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee backed a Union shield. The wheat design was dropped for looking too much like a German coin of the 1920s, and the shield won. The Mint unveiled it on November 12, 2009, at the ceremony that released the last of the 2009 Bicentennial cents.

Lyndall Bass, an artist in the Mint's Artistic Infusion Program, drew the shield, and staff sculptor Joseph Menna turned it into a model. Victor David Brenner's 1909 portrait of Lincoln stayed on the obverse, though the Mint re-engraved it from Brenner's original galvano. The earlier Memorial reverse is covered on the Lincoln Memorial cent page.

The new cents reached Puerto Rico first, in January 2010, because the island was short of cents. The official launch came on February 11, 2010, in Springfield, Illinois, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Philadelphia and Denver then struck billions a year, and San Francisco made the proofs.

Two one-year mint marks followed. In January 2017 cents with a P turned up in change without warning; the Mint confirmed that every Philadelphia cent that year carried the letter for its 225th anniversary. In 2019 the West Point Mint struck cents with a W for three of the year's collector sets.

The series ended in 2025. On February 9 President Trump ordered the Treasury to stop making cents, and the Treasury bought its last cent blanks in May. The Mint struck the final circulating cents at Philadelphia on November 12, 2025, marking the last of them with an omega. The 2026 cent, dual-dated for the nation's 250th anniversary, is sold only in sets; see the 2026 Semiquincentennial page.

Design. The obverse is Brenner's Lincoln facing right, with IN GOD WE TRUST above, LIBERTY at the left and the date at the right. The reverse shows a Union shield with thirteen vertical stripes under a bar bearing E PLURIBUS UNUM, with ONE CENT on a scroll across the stripes and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above. Bass's initials LB sit below the scroll on the left and Menna's on the right.

Mint mark. It is under the date.

Special finishes. Besides the regular proofs, look for these collector issues:

• 2010 satin finish. The 2010 Uncirculated Mint Set held Philadelphia and Denver cents with a soft satin surface. NGC lists them in the usual copper-plated zinc at 2.5 grams.
• 2017-S Enhanced Uncirculated. From the 225th Anniversary Enhanced Uncirculated Coin Set, sold from August 1, 2017. The Mint combined laser-frosted areas with an unpolished field.
• 2018-S Reverse Proof. From the 2018 Silver Reverse Proof Set, which marked fifty years of San Francisco proof sets. Here the devices are mirrored and the fields frosted, the opposite of a normal proof.
• 2019-W. One cent in each of three finishes, described below.

• 2017-P: the only Philadelphia cent with a P. The Mint added the letter to the master die, so every die that year had it.
• 2019-W: the uncirculated coin came in the Uncirculated Mint Set, the proof in the Proof Set and the reverse proof in the Silver Proof Set. Coin World noted that West Point had not struck cents in more than forty years; its earlier cents carried no mint mark.
• 2025 Omega cents: Philadelphia, Denver and 24-karat gold. The Mint made 232 sets of three, one for each year of cent production since 1793, and Stack's Bowers auctioned them on December 11, 2025.
• 2014 doubled die obverse. Strong thickness and notching on LIBERTY and the date, lighter on WE TRUST. Wexler lists it as WDDO-002 and VarietyVista as DDO-001; both give the Cherrypickers' number FS-101.
• 2017-P doubled working hubs. Wexler found that many dies listed separately as 2017-P doubled dies came from two doubled working hubs, now WWHO-001 and WWHO-002. On both, LIBERTY is thick and the left arm of the Y heavier than the right. Because the doubling sits in the hub, the die markers change from coin to coin.
• 2019 doubled master die: Wexler's WMDO-001, with extra thickness on the 9 of the date. A doubled master die passes its doubling to every working die made from it.
• Spiked heads and trail dies. Cuds on Coins files a die crack that runs from the rim into Lincoln's bust as a "spike head" (SKH) and lists Shield cent examples by year. Trail Dies catalogs the faint trail lines that follow the letters on some dies. CoinWeek's summary is that the industry recognizes no major Shield varieties, only minor doubling on Philadelphia coins.

No Shield cent contains silver. CoinWeek breaks the plated cent down as a core of 99.2% zinc and 0.8% copper under a coat of pure copper. The 2010 satin coins, the 2017-S, the 2018-S and the 2019-W cents are all in the same plated zinc as cents from circulation. The 95% copper alloy was used in 2009 for collector cents only, as explained on the Bicentennial page.