1959

The 1959 Lincoln cent marked the most significant redesign of America's most common coin in half a century. For fifty years, two heads of wheat had graced the reverse. In 1959, to honor the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, the U.S. Mint replaced that familiar wheat design with a depiction of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Frank Gasparro, an engraver at the Philadelphia Mint, created the new reverse. His small "FG" initials appear at the lower right of the Memorial.

The year 1959 also saw Alaska and Hawaii admitted as the 49th and 50th states, completing the map of the United States as we know it. The Philadelphia Mint struck just over 610 million of these cents without a mintmark. Collectors who grew up with wheat-reverse pennies immediately noticed the change, and many set aside rolls of the new design. That widespread hoarding means the 1959 Philadelphia issue remains easy to find in high grades decades later.