2009 Birthplace/Frontier, Copper

The 2009 Lincoln Birthplace/Frontier cent in its special 95% copper composition represents one of the most historically deliberate coins the United States Mint has ever produced. Congress authorized the Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act of 2006 to mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth on February 12, 1809. The reverse, designed by Richard Masters and sculpted by Jim Licaretz, depicts a one-room log cabin in the Kentucky wilderness near Hodgenville, where Lincoln was born. The cabin sits alone against a sparse frontier landscape, a visual shorthand for the poverty and isolation of Lincoln's earliest years.

The copper composition carries its own significance. From 1909 through 1982, Lincoln cents were struck primarily in a bronze alloy of 95% copper. By 2009, standard cents had been copper-plated zinc for over two decades. The Mint produced these satin finish copper versions exclusively for collectors, packaging them in special sets. They weigh 3.1 grams compared to the 2.5-gram zinc coins, and experienced collectors can feel the difference immediately. The obverse retains Victor David Brenner's 1909 portrait of Lincoln, itself a century old by the time these coins were struck. Fewer than three million of these copper versions were produced, a fraction of the hundreds of millions of zinc cents entering circulation the same year.