Lincoln Wheat Cents
The tradition of placing allegorical figures on American coins rather than real people had held since the republic's founding. Putting a leader's portrait on money was understood as a monarchical…
Denomination
Small Cents
6 articles
Indian Head Cents
James B. Longacre made his case to Mint Director James Ross Snowden in a letter dated August 21, 1858: the feathered headdress was as characteristic of the Western Hemisphere as the turban was of the…
Lincoln Bicentennial Cents
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…
Lincoln Shield Cents
The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which mandated the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial cent program, also required that beginning in 2010 the cent's reverse bear an image emblematic of Lincoln's…
Lincoln Memorial Cents
On December 21, 1958, President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty issued a release announcing that the Lincoln cent would carry a new reverse beginning January 2, 1959. The fifty-year wheat…
Flying Eagle Cents
By the early 1850s the large copper cent was failing by every practical measure. The Mint was losing money on each one: one hundred cents cost more than a dollar in copper to produce. The coin…