2009 Lincoln Bicentennial Cents

Two Anniversaries in One Year, and a Congressional Mandate

The year 2009 was, in numismatic terms, genuinely unusual. February 12 marked the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. August 2 marked the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln cent. No other year in American coinage history has combined a bicentennial of the person depicted on a coin with the centennial of the coin itself. Congress had recognized the opportunity four years in advance, embedding a requirement in the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 that the cent's reverse be redesigned for 2009 with four distinct images representing successive periods of Lincoln's life, issued quarterly throughout the year. The obverse portrait by Brenner, unchanged since 1909, would remain.¹

The four designs were unveiled at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on September 22, 2008. Each was produced by the Mint's engraving staff and Artistic Infusion Program artists working in collaboration. They were released into circulation at approximately twelve-week intervals, with a public ceremony at a location tied to each design's biographical subject. The model was the 50 State Quarters program, which had demonstrated that quarterly releases sustain collector engagement in a way that single annual changes do not.

The Four Reverses

Zinc for Commerce, Bronze for Collectors

The 2009 cents were produced in three distinct forms. Circulation strikes at Philadelphia and Denver used the standard copper-plated zinc composition in place since 1982: a core of 97.5 percent zinc, 2.5 percent copper plating, 2.5 grams. The law also required that collector versions be offered in the original 1909 alloy of 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc, giving collectors a direct material connection to the first Lincoln cents struck a century earlier. This bronze composition, 3.11 grams and the warm orange color of genuine copper, was used for the satin-finish coins in the annual Uncirculated Sets and for the mirror-finish Deep Cameo Proofs struck at San Francisco for Proof Sets.²

The result was the only year since 1982 in which the cent was produced in genuine copper for any commercially available product. For a collector who wanted to hold a coin compositionally identical to a 1909 Lincoln cent, 2009 provided the only modern opportunity. That distinction has sustained modest premiums for the bronze collector versions over the zinc circulation pieces at equivalent certified grades.

A Recession and 327 Million Coins Nobody Could Find

The bicentennial cents circulated, or failed to circulate, in the worst economic year the United States had experienced since the 1930s. Severe recessions produce a specific monetary phenomenon: people empty their coin jars and drawers back into the banking system, creating a surplus of existing coins at Federal Reserve facilities and reducing demand for new production. This happened in 2009 on a significant scale. Despite combined mintages in the hundreds of millions, the bicentennial cents were surprisingly difficult to find in circulation in many parts of the country, particularly the later releases.³

The Presidency cent's 327.6 million combined mintage, less than half the Formative Years total, reflects both the recession's suppression of fourth-quarter coin orders and the general pattern of declining Federal Reserve demand as the year progressed. The Mint responded to the circulation scarcity by selling two-roll sets directly to collectors at $8.95 per set. The first sets, containing fifty Philadelphia and fifty Denver coins each, sold out within two weeks with approximately 96,000 sets ordered.

The Certification Market and Why the Presidency Cent Is Scarcer

Collector enthusiasm for the series followed the pattern common to quarterly-release programs: strong at the start, declining with each successive issue. The Kentucky and Indiana designs generated the highest certification submission volumes; by the time the Presidency cent appeared in November, submission totals had dropped substantially. The practical consequence is that the Presidency cent is genuinely scarcer than the other three in certified Mint State 67 Red and above, not because fewer were struck relative to the others in absolute terms but because fewer were submitted for grading at the time of release, when the coins were freshest and most likely to grade at the top of the range. That window does not fully reopen later.

For grades through Mint State 66 Red, all four designs are common and available at minimal premiums over face value. The series becomes interesting above that threshold. The bronze collector versions, in both satin and proof finishes, trade at modest premiums over their zinc counterparts and appeal to collectors specifically because of their compositional relationship to the 1909 issues. A complete set of all four designs in both the zinc and bronze compositions, across both Philadelphia and Denver for circulation and San Francisco for proofs, is a compact and achievable collecting project at reasonable cost.

Building the Set

A base set of eight circulation coins, one of each design from Philadelphia and Denver, can be assembled at face value from a jar of saved change or for minimal cost from any dealer. Sixteen pieces covers the zinc circulation and bronze satin collector versions across both compositions. Adding the San Francisco proofs completes the picture. None of this requires significant budget; the challenge is assembling the bronze versions specifically, since those were sold in collector sets rather than circulated, and sets from reputable sellers are the most reliable source.

The Presidency cent in certified Mint State 67 Red is the one piece worth seeking in slabbed form if condition matters to you. It is the scarcest of the four in that grade by a meaningful margin, and the gap is likely to persist. For everything else in the series, raw examples with obvious visual appeal are a perfectly reasonable approach given the modest price points involved across most of the grade range.