Lincoln Wheat Cents 1909-1958

The Lincoln cent arrived in 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and it changed American coinage. Earlier coins had shown allegorical figures such as Liberty; this one carried a real person's portrait on a coin made for everyday use. The designer was Victor David Brenner, a Lithuanian-born engraver working in New York. The new cents reached banks on August 2, 1909, replacing the Indian Head cent.

The launch hit trouble at once. Brenner had signed the bottom of the reverse with his initials, V.D.B., and newspapers campaigned against them as too prominent. On August 5, Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh had production stopped so the initials could come off. By then Philadelphia had struck 27,995,000 cents with them and San Francisco only 484,000. Chief Engraver Charles Barber removed the initials and did not put them anywhere else. After Barber died in 1917, they came back in 1918 in tiny letters on the lower edge of Lincoln's shoulder, where they stayed.

Denver struck its first cents in 1911. Proofs from 1909 to 1916 have a matte or satin surface, the natural texture of Brenner's models brought out by a full strike, rather than a mirror finish. The Mint stopped selling proofs after 1916. When proofs returned in 1936 they came in satin and brilliant finishes, then brilliant only through 1942, and there were none again until 1950.

World War II changed the metal twice. To save copper, the 1943 cents were struck on zinc-coated steel, more than a billion of them across the three mints. They were unpopular: new ones passed for dimes, worn ones for nickels, and because they were magnetic, vending machines and turnstiles rejected them. From 1944 through 1946 the Mint went back to a copper alloy but left out the tin, using brass that was partly recovered from spent cartridge cases. Bronze returned for 1947, and the wheat-ear reverse ran through 1958. In 1959, for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Frank Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse replaced it.

Obverse. Lincoln faces right. IN GOD WE TRUST, the motto's first appearance on the cent, runs across the top; LIBERTY is to the left of the portrait and the date to the right. On cents dated 1918 or later, a magnifier shows V D B on the bottom edge of the shoulder.

Reverse. ONE CENT and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA sit in the center, flanked by two curved ears of wheat. E PLURIBUS UNUM arcs along the top rim. Only the first 1909 cents have V.D.B. here, at the bottom.

Mint mark. The mint mark is on the obverse, directly below the date. D is Denver and S is San Francisco; Philadelphia used none. San Francisco made no cents in 1956 to 1958, and only Denver made them in 1922.

Color. Graders describe original color as Brown (BN), Red-Brown (RB) or Red (RD), and fully red early dates bring large premiums.

Altered coins. The best-known keys are faked by adding a mint mark or changing a date. A 1914-D with V D B on the shoulder is an altered 1944-D, since the initials did not return until 1918.

• 1909-S VDB: 484,000 struck before the initials came off. Many were saved because people expected a recall, so the coin survives in better numbers than its mintage suggests. NGC notes four obverse dies, identified by where the S sits, which helps authentication.
• 1909-S: 1,825,000 struck without initials. NGC finds it harder to locate in Mint State than the VDB coin, because few people saved it.
• 1914-D: 1,193,000 struck. Speculators ignored it, and NGC believes it has the smallest surviving population of the early keys.
• 1922 No D: Denver struck all 7,160,000 cents of 1922 in January and February. On some, a worn obverse die lost the D. The strong-reverse die pair is the one collectors want.
• 1931-S: 866,000 struck, mostly early in 1931. The coins sat unissued until 1935, when dealers bought them by the roll, so Mint State pieces are easier to find than worn ones.
• Doubled dies. The 1917, 1936 and 1958 doubled die obverses all carry strong premiums; NGC calls the bold 1958 exceedingly rare. The 1955 Doubled Die Obverse is the famous one: struck at Philadelphia in the fall of 1955, when the Mint was running 12-hour days, with an estimated 24,000 made.
• 1944-D/S: Denver mint marks punched over an S. Two dies are recognized, FS-511 with the S high and FS-512 with the S low.
• 1943 bronze: a few cents struck on leftover 1942 bronze planchets. NGC confirms about 17 from Philadelphia; USA Coin Book also lists about five from San Francisco and a single Denver coin. A magnet test rules out plated steel.
• 1944 steel: the reverse error, cents struck on leftover 1943 steel planchets. Philadelphia was striking Belgian 2-franc coins on those planchets in 1944, which made strays possible. Denver and San Francisco examples are rarer still.

Wheat cents contain no silver. Tin was only a small share of the bronze alloy (about 1%, according to NGC), so the 1944 to 1946 brass cents look the same as bronze ones, and NGC doubts the reports that they differ in color. Weight and a magnet separate the 1943 steel cents from everything else.