Lincoln Memorial Cents

The Memorial reverse entered production in 1959, timed to the sesquicentennial of Lincoln's birth, and replaced the Wheat stalks that had been on the coin since 1909. Public reaction was muted compared to the excitement that had greeted the original Lincoln cent. There were no lines at banks. The design was generally regarded as competent but not exciting, and some collectors grumbled that the architectural reverse lacked the warmth of the old Wheat ears. None of this mattered much in practice. The coin worked, it struck up well, and the Mint produced enormous quantities of them.

The composition story is more complicated than the design story. Memorial cents started out in the same bronze alloy that had been standard since 1864, 95% copper with 5% tin and zinc, at 3.11 grams. That held until 1962, when the Mint quietly dropped the tin and went to 95% copper and 5% zinc, a change so minor that most references barely mention it. The real change came in 1982, when rising copper prices forced a switch to copper-plated zinc, 97.5% zinc with a thin copper coating, at a reduced weight of 2.5 grams. The Mint made the transition midyear, so 1982 cents exist in both compositions. You can tell them apart by weight, or by dropping them on a hard surface. The copper ones ring; the zinc ones thud. Both Large Date and Small Date varieties exist for 1982 in both compositions, creating a set of seven distinct varieties for the year if you count the proofs, which has made 1982 a minor obsession for variety collectors.

Production volumes during the Memorial cent era were staggering by any historical standard. The Mint routinely struck billions of cents per year through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The 1964 mintage alone exceeded five billion pieces across Philadelphia and Denver, a response to a nationwide coin shortage driven partly by hoarding and partly by the explosive growth of vending machines. Mintmarks were removed from cents (and all other denominations) from 1965 through 1967 as a misguided attempt to discourage collecting, which Congress and the Treasury blamed, incorrectly, for the shortage. The P mintmark appeared on Lincoln cents for the first time in 1959, or rather it didn't, Philadelphia cents continued to carry no mintmark until 2017, when the Mint finally added a P to cents as a one-year gesture tied to the 225th anniversary of the Mint's founding.

The San Francisco Mint stopped producing cents for circulation after 1974, shifting to proof-only production for collector sets. West Point struck cents in 1974 and again in the early 1980s, but without a mintmark, making them indistinguishable from Philadelphia issues. The result is that most Memorial cents from the late 1970s onward carry either no mintmark or a D, with S appearing only on proofs.

There are no great rarities in the Memorial cent series, not in the way that the 1909-S V.D.B. or the 1877 Indian Head are rare. The mintages are simply too high. But there are varieties and errors that attract attention. The 1972 doubled die obverse is the most prominent, showing strong doubling on the date and inscriptions visible without magnification, a lesser echo of the famous 1955 doubled die. The 1983 doubled die reverse, with obvious doubling on UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and E PLURIBUS UNUM, is another popular variety. The 1990 "No S" proof, where the San Francisco mintmark was accidentally omitted from a proof die, is scarce and commands serious money despite being a modern coin, with an estimated 3,500 or so believed to exist from the roughly 3.3 million proof sets sold that year.

The 1982 composition transition created its own set of collectible varieties. The seven-coin 1982 set, covering both compositions in both date sizes from both mints plus the proof, has become a standard collecting challenge, partly because the zinc and copper versions are not always easy to distinguish visually, particularly in circulated condition. The 1982-D Small Date in copper is the toughest of the group, not rare exactly but less common than the others and often overlooked.

The aluminum cent of 1974 deserves a mention, even though it never entered circulation. The Mint struck approximately 1.5 million aluminum cents as a proposed replacement for the increasingly expensive copper composition. Congress ultimately rejected the idea, and the Mint recalled and destroyed nearly all of them. A handful escaped, and their legal status has been contested for decades. The Mint has maintained that they are government property and should be returned, which has not stopped the occasional example from surfacing and generating headlines.

Memorial cents were the background noise of American commerce for fifty years. They were everywhere, in every cash register, every pocket, every couch cushion, every parking lot in the country. A cent in 1959 still had some marginal purchasing power, enough to buy a gumball or contribute meaningfully to a sales tax calculation. By the time the Memorial reverse ended in 2008, a cent was essentially worthless as a unit of exchange. You could not buy anything with one. Vending machines had long since stopped accepting them. Many retailers rounded transactions to the nearest nickel. The coin persisted not because it served any real commercial function but because eliminating it would have required an act of Congress, and nobody wanted to be the politician who killed the penny. The zinc cents introduced in 1982 were particularly unloved, prone to corrosion, ugly when worn, and lighter in the hand than the copper cents people remembered. But they kept getting made, year after year, in quantities that guaranteed they would be underfoot for generations. The Memorial reverse was finally retired in 2009, replaced by four rotating designs celebrating Lincoln's life for the bicentennial year, followed by the Union Shield reverse that continues today. Gasparro's Memorial had lasted exactly fifty years, matching the Wheat reverse's run to the year.

Sources: Q. David Bowers, A Guide Book of Lincoln Cents (Whitman Publishing, 2016); David W. Lange, The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents (DLRC Press, 2005); Walter Breen, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins (Doubleday, 1988); R.S. Yeoman & Jeff Garrett, A Guide Book of United States Coins (Whitman Publishing, 2025); PCGS CoinFacts.