Lincoln Shield Cents (2010–2025)

What Comes After Four Bicentennial Designs

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 preservation of the United States as a single and united country. The four 2009 designs had narrated Lincoln's life from Kentucky to Washington. The Shield cent was the fifth chapter: not Lincoln himself but the outcome of his most consequential act. The design was unveiled on November 12, 2009, at the same ceremony that released the fourth bicentennial cent. The first Shield cents entered circulation in Puerto Rico in January 2010, where the island was experiencing a cent shortage. Mainland distribution followed shortly after.¹

What Bass Designed and What Menna Built From It

Lyndall Bass, a New Mexico-based painter who had joined the Mint's Artistic Infusion Program in February 2007, received the Shield cent commission with a brief calling for imagery of Union preservation. Her first submission, a full-length portrait of the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial, was rejected. Program direction pointed toward a shield, an eagle, and a laurel wreath as candidate elements. Bass developed several proposals; the shield-only design was selected.²

The reverse shows a Union shield with thirteen vertical stripes representing the original states, beneath a broad horizontal bar representing the federal government. E PLURIBUS UNUM is inscribed on the horizontal bar: the motto's literal meaning made explicit by the design it sits on. A scroll bearing ONE CENT drapes across the lower shield. Bass described the scroll as implying movement, her view being that currency becomes currency only when it circulates. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arcs along the top rim. The initials LB and JFM appear at the scroll's base for Bass and sculptor Joseph F. Menna respectively.

Menna translated Bass's design into the working coin model. He had joined the Mint's staff in 2005 after classical training in both traditional and digital sculpture, and was appointed Chief Engraver in 2019. The shield he rendered is consistent with Union shield imagery in frescoes throughout the United States Capitol, giving the coin a visual connection to the building whose unfinished dome had appeared on the preceding Presidency cent. Whether that continuity was deliberate design strategy or incidental consistency is not documented in the available record. It is at minimum a satisfying coincidence.³

The obverse was revised for 2010. The Mint returned to Brenner's original 1909 galvano to prepare new master dies, though it did not restore the higher relief of the earliest Lincoln cents. Most specialists regard the Shield reverse as an improvement on the Memorial design it replaced. The assessment is not universal, but it is common enough to be worth stating.

Fifty Years, Every Time

The Lincoln cent has changed its reverse at half-century intervals with a regularity that is either deliberate policy or an extraordinary coincidence. The Indian Head cent debuted in 1859. The Lincoln wheat cent replaced it in 1909. The Memorial reverse replaced the wheat design in 1959. The Bicentennial and Shield reverses arrived in 2009 and 2010. Whether the pattern was ever consciously maintained by anyone at the Mint or in Congress is not documented. It has been noted in numismatic literature often enough that someone, somewhere, has been aware of it. If the pattern held, the next major change would fall around 2059. The cent's retirement in 2025 makes that question academic, but it is a genuinely unusual aspect of a series that ran for 116 years.⁴

2017-P: Two Weeks Until Someone Noticed

In the entire history of the American cent, from the large cents of 1793 through the Lincoln Shield series, no cent struck at the Philadelphia Mint had ever carried a P mint mark. That changed in January 2017. Mint employees had proposed adding the P to that year's cents to mark the facility's 225th anniversary, which fell on April 2, 2017. Director David Ryder approved. The coins were shipped to Federal Reserve Banks without any public announcement; the Mint's stated intention was to see how long it would take before someone questioned their authenticity.⁵

The answer was two weeks. Terry Granstaff, a collector in Black Mountain, North Carolina, found a 2017-P cent in change at a gas station on January 13 and posted images to a PCGS online discussion board. The Mint confirmed the coins' authenticity within days. Approximately 4.36 billion 2017-P cents were ultimately struck, making them common by every production measure, but one-year mint mark status ensured they would be saved and collected as a distinct type from the moment of their identification. Philadelphia cents reverted to no mint mark in 2018.

2019-W: Three Finishes, Three Sets, One Anniversary

West Point had a prior history with the Lincoln cent that predated the Shield design. The facility had struck cents without a mint mark between 1974 and 1986 to supplement Philadelphia during high-demand periods; those coins are indistinguishable from Philadelphia issues and were never identified to collectors at the time. In 2019, to mark the cent's 110th anniversary, the Mint announced that West Point would strike cents bearing the W mint mark as an identified collector issue for the first time.

The 2019-W cents were not distributed to general circulation. Three versions were produced, each in a different finish, each included as a bonus item within one of the year's annual collector sets: a standard Proof in the Proof Set, a Reverse Proof in the Silver Proof Set, and an Uncirculated satin-finish cent in the Uncirculated Coin Set. The Reverse Proof 2019-W was only the second Reverse Proof Lincoln cent ever struck; the first was the 2018-S, issued in the 50th Anniversary San Francisco Mint Reverse Proof Set commemorating that facility's half-century of proof coin production. Collectors who wanted all three finishes needed to purchase all three sets, which the Mint presumably anticipated when it designed the release structure.

November 12, 2025, Philadelphia

In May 2025, the Treasury announced it had placed its final order of cent blanks and would discontinue circulating cent production once the existing supply was exhausted. Production costs had reached approximately 3.69 cents per coin, and political consensus for eliminating the denomination had finally formed after decades of intermittent debate. The cent remained legal tender and continued in collector set production, but its role as a circulating coin ended.⁶

A ceremonial final striking took place at the Philadelphia Mint on November 12, 2025, the date chosen because it was the same day the Presidency Bicentennial cent had been released in 2009 and the same day the Shield design had been unveiled that year, sixteen years earlier. The Mint then auctioned 232 sets of the final circulating cents through Stack's Bowers Galleries on December 11–12, 2025. Each set contained one Philadelphia example, one Denver example, and a 24-karat gold uncirculated cent from Philadelphia, all struck with an omega privy mark. The sale realized $16.76 million, an average of approximately $72,000 per set; the top lot, Set 232 containing the canceled dies, realized $800,000.⁷

The cent had run continuously from the first large cents of 1793 to the Shield cents of 2025: 232 years. The Lincoln cent specifically, carrying Brenner's portrait from 1909 through 2025, had run for 116 years on the same denomination without a change to the obverse, longer than any other coin portrait in the history of any major democracy's circulating coinage.

Building the Set

The Shield cent is the most accessible series in Lincoln cent collecting. Every date and mint from 2010 through 2025 is available at face value from circulation or at nominal cost from dealers, with the exception of the 2019-W collector-only issues, which require purchase of the relevant annual sets or the secondary market. A complete date-and-mint set of circulation issues, including the 2017-P, is a straightforward and affordable project. The 2017-P carries a modest premium given its one-year mint mark status, but its large mintage keeps that premium reasonable.

For grade collectors, the Shield cent offers the same condition-rarity dynamic as the Memorial cent: common through Mint State 66 in original red, with populations dropping sharply above that. The zinc core makes long-term preservation of uncirculated examples genuinely challenging; slabbed coins in proper holders slow the oxidation process that produces zinc rot when the copper plating is breached. San Francisco proofs exist for all years and are available at modest premiums through the annual Proof Sets. The 2014-P doubled die obverse is the most recognized variety in the series to date, though modern hub technology has made true doubled dies considerably rarer than in the nineteenth and early twentieth century issues.

The series ended at a clean collecting boundary in 2025. A complete date-and-mint set of Lincoln Shield cents is finite, definable, and attainable. That is not something one could say about the series at any earlier point in its run, and it is a different kind of appeal from the open-ended date sets the earlier Lincoln cent chapters offered. The denomination is over and the circulation set can now be completed.