1909 Lincoln

The 1909 Lincoln cent without the VDB initials represents the second version of the coin produced that year. When Victor David Brenner's Lincoln cent debuted in August 1909, his initials V.D.B. appeared prominently on the reverse. Public outcry over the size and placement of the initials prompted the Mint to remove them within days. The no-VDB version, struck from modified dies, accounted for the majority of the year's Philadelphia production.

The Lincoln cent was the first regular-issue United States coin to bear the portrait of a real, identifiable person. The centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth (1809-1909) provided the occasion, and President Theodore Roosevelt provided the impetus. Roosevelt had admired a bronze plaque of Lincoln by Lithuanian-born sculptor Victor David Brenner and commissioned him to design the new cent. The result was a coin that broke with a century of allegorical Liberty portraits and placed an actual president on American money.

The no-VDB 1909 Philadelphia cent was struck in large quantity (over 72 million coins) and is common in all grades. For type collectors, it represents the standard first-year Lincoln Wheat cent at an affordable price. The coin is the same design that would remain on the cent through 1958, with the two wheat stalks on the reverse framing ONE CENT. A fifty-year production run had begun.