Lincoln Memorial Cents (1959–2008)

No Warning, Twenty-Three Designs, One Winner

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 design was being replaced to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. The Treasury had developed the change in consultation with the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission; Eisenhower and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson gave final approval. Twenty-three designs were submitted internally at the Philadelphia Mint. Frank Gasparro, then assistant engraver, won the competition. The coins were released on February 12, Lincoln's birthday.¹

Gasparro's reverse shows a plan view of the Lincoln Memorial centered on the coin, E PLURIBUS UNUM above, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arcing near the top rim, ONE CENT at the bottom. His initials FG appear at the lower right of the Memorial's base. The Commission of Fine Arts questioned the architectural accuracy of Gasparro's drawing and gave it only conditional approval, and later numismatic writers were harsher: Don Taxay likened it to a trolley car, and Walter Breen called it an artistic disaster. None of that mattered commercially. The Memorial cent became the most familiar coin in American life for the next fifty years, and Brenner's 1909 obverse portrait stayed on it throughout, though the Mint reworked its hub several times beginning in 1969.

The 1982 Composition Change and Seven Varieties in One Year

The Memorial cent ran in bronze, 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc, from 1959 through the early 1960s. A tin shortage prompted a quiet reformulation in late 1962 to a true brass, 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc; the change was invisible to the eye and the term "bronze" persisted in common use. This brass composition continued into 1982, when rising copper prices had pushed the cost of each cent close to its face value; zinc cents went into production in January 1982, while Denver struck brass until October. The switch to a zinc core with thin copper plating reduced the coin's weight from 3.11 grams to 2.5 grams while maintaining its appearance.²

The transition year produced seven distinct varieties as both compositions were struck at Philadelphia and Denver, with Large Date and Small Date dies in use at each facility. Identifying the copper from the zinc 1982 cents requires weight testing; visual inspection is unreliable. Outside the seven stands the 1982-D Small Date copper, a Mint error struck on leftover brass planchets, of which only two examples have been authenticated. Both were certified by NGC as About Uncirculated 58 Brown, and both are known to the specialist community individually. Finding a third would be a significant discovery.³

The zinc core introduced a durability problem that copper had not. Wherever the plating is breached, the zinc reacts with oxygen and moisture to form zinc oxide, spreading as black corrosion that collectors call zinc rot. High-grade zinc cents are difficult to preserve over decades, so top-certified examples from the zinc era trade at premiums the mintage figures alone would not predict.

The 1969-S Doubled Die: Thirty to Sixty Coins

The most valuable error variety in the Memorial cent series came from San Francisco in 1969. The 1969-S Doubled Die Obverse shows dramatic doubling on IN GOD WE TRUST, LIBERTY, and the date, visible to the naked eye without magnification. The coins reached circulation unnoticed, and when they surfaced the Secret Service, then pursuing counterfeit 1969 doubled-die cents, seized and destroyed some genuine examples as fakes. Estimates of the number known range from about thirty (PCGS CoinFacts) to fifty or sixty (Stack's Bowers, from combined grading-service statistics). The auction record for the variety is $601,875, realized at GreatCollections on January 22, 2023, for a PCGS Mint State 66 Red (CAC) example from the Stewart Blay Collection, the finest known by a wide margin.⁴ Counterfeits are known. Any candidate requires PCGS or NGC authentication before any value is assigned.

The 1972 Doubled Die Obverse is more available but still significant, particularly DDO-1 (Fivaz-Stanton FS-101), a rotated-hub doubling that shows strongly on the date, LIBERTY and IN GOD WE TRUST. Multiple doubling types exist for 1972; FS-101 is the one that commands a real premium. The 1984 DDO "Doubled Ear," where Lincoln appears to have a second earlobe, and the 1983 Doubled Die Reverse are both actively collected at more accessible prices. The 1995 DDO is among the most widely recognized zinc-era varieties, showing clear doubling on LIBERTY visible without magnification and appearing frequently enough in circulation-level finds to have introduced many collectors to variety hunting.

The 1990 No-S Proof and the AM Varieties

The 1990 No-S Proof cent was produced when a die was shipped from Philadelphia to San Francisco without the S mintmark being applied. Fewer than 200 examples have surfaced, according to PCGS, all in proof condition, which puts it among the rarest proof issues of the Memorial cent series. Unlike the major circulation errors, the 1990 No-S surfaces almost exclusively through examination of proof sets rather than through circulation finds.⁵

The Close AM and Wide AM varieties reward collectors willing to examine common dates carefully. On the 1992 and 1992-D cents, a few dies carrying the new Close AM reverse, intended for 1993 business strikes, were used a year early; these coins show the letters A and M in AMERICA nearly touching (Close AM), where the 1992 standard reverse spaced them apart. On 1998, 1999, and 2000 circulation cents, a different error occurred: older proof-style reverse dies carrying the Wide AM hub were used on business-strike presses, producing coins where A and M appear visibly separated, the opposite of the Close AM spacing. Premiums vary widely: the 2000 Wide AM is the least rare and brings modest sums, while the 1999 Wide AM is the scarcest of the three and commands the most. The proof-side anomaly runs in the other direction: the 1998-S and 1999-S proof cents were struck with a business-strike (Close AM) die rather than the intended proof (Wide AM) die, producing Close AM proof cents from those years. None of this requires specialized equipment to find: a loupe, a reference image, and time spent with a box of bank rolls is sufficient. The Cherrypickers' Guide covers the attribution criteria.⁶

Why the Cent Lasted So Long

The economic case for eliminating the cent strengthened steadily through the Memorial series' latter decades and was finally acted on without Congress: in February 2025 President Trump ordered the Treasury to stop producing cents, and the Mint struck its final circulating cent at Philadelphia on November 12, 2025. The coin cost more to produce than its face value, rarely circulated productively in an economy dominated by card transactions, and accumulated in jars. Canada eliminated its one-cent coin in 2013. Several serious proposals for American cent elimination have been advanced without congressional action. For decades the denomination survived in part because the disruption of retail rounding was uncertain, in part because the Lincoln association gave the cent a cultural weight that economic arguments struggled to overcome, and in part because, until 2025, no administration had wanted to absorb the political cost of retiring Lincoln's coin.

Building the Set

The Memorial cent divides naturally at 1982. The copper era of 1959 through 1982 offers a manageable date-and-mint run with several meaningful varieties and the significant errors described above. Original red examples from the early copper dates are genuinely difficult to find above Mint State 66, and they command corresponding premiums. The zinc era of 1982 through 2008 is accessible in high grades for common dates but presents the zinc rot challenge for long-term preservation; slabbed examples from a major certification service are the most reliable way to secure quality in the zinc era because the holder slows the environmental reactions that otherwise degrade the surface.

A basic date-and-mint set with no particular variety focus can be assembled easily at modest cost. The series' premium comes from condition and variety attribution, not date scarcity. A variety set built around the major doubled dies, the AM transitionals, and the 1982 composition varieties is a more demanding pursuit. The 1969-S DDO is the costliest coin in such a set, and buying one means waiting for a certified example to come to auction. The 1982-D Small Date copper requires finding one, which is essentially a matter of luck at this point given that only two are known.

The Cherrypickers' Guide by Fivaz and Stanton is the essential reference for variety attribution in this series. Bowers's Whitman guide and Lange's complete guide provide the broader historical and market context. For any Memorial cent variety worth more than a few hundred dollars, certification is not optional.