Lincoln Wheat Cents (1909–1958)

The First American Coin With a Real Person's Face

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 gesture, inappropriate for a nation that had fought a revolution against a king. That tradition ended on August 2, 1909, when the Lincoln cent entered circulation as the first regularly issued United States coin to depict an actual historical person.

Theodore Roosevelt had been working to raise American coin design standards since at least 1905, when he commissioned Saint-Gaudens for the gold denominations. Saint-Gaudens died in 1907. Roosevelt encountered Victor David Brenner in late 1908, when the Lithuanian-born sculptor was working on a medal for the Panama Canal Commission; Roosevelt had already admired a Lincoln plaque Brenner had made for Gorham Manufacturing in 1907 and asked him to adapt it for the cent. In January 1909, Mint Director Frank Leach formalized the commission.¹

Brenner worked through a protracted approval process involving conflicts with Chief Engraver Charles Barber, multiple revisions, and a missed target of Lincoln's February 12 birthday. Secretary of the Treasury Franklin MacVeagh did not approve the final design until July. When the coins appeared, the response was immediate: lines at Sub-Treasury offices, rationing at one hundred coins per customer, supplies exhausted by August 5, street vendors selling them at premiums within the week. The numismatic historian Roger Burdette has identified the likely portrait source as an 1864 photograph of Lincoln taken at Mathew Brady's studio; Brenner himself wrote that he imagined Lincoln reading to a child, a moment he felt would have revealed Lincoln's most humane quality.²

The Reverse, the Initials, and 484,000 Reasons the VDB Matters

The obverse presents Lincoln from the shoulders up in right profile, a more expansive portrait than the bust-only treatments of the preceding small cents. IN GOD WE TRUST appears above, the first cent to carry it. LIBERTY to the left, date below. The reverse carries two stylized durum wheat stalks flanking ONE CENT, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above and E PLURIBUS UNUM along the top rim. Brenner's initials V.D.B. sat in small letters at the base of the reverse.

Public criticism of the initials was widespread within days of the release: a private artist's mark on federal coinage read as advertising, not attribution. The initials were removed before the end of August 1909, creating an instant collecting divide. The 1909 Philadelphia VDB, at nearly 28 million pieces, remained accessible. The 1909-S VDB, struck at San Francisco before the removal, had a mintage of 484,000. Between 30,000 and 40,000 examples are estimated to survive across all grades.³ That is not a small number in absolute terms, but the coin has been the defining want of Lincoln cent collecting since penny boards popularized the series in the 1930s, and demand has consistently exceeded supply in every grade above Good. The initials returned in 1918 in tiny letters on Lincoln's shoulder, inconspicuous enough that most people handling the coin never see them.

1914-D, 1922 Plain, 1931-S: Different Causes, Same Result

The 1914-D had a mintage of 1,193,000 pieces. It is a major key date and one of the most counterfeited coins in the series: the standard fraud adds a forged D mintmark to a common 1914 Philadelphia coin, and some examples are executed well enough to fool casual inspection. Any 1914-D should be purchased in a certified holder, full stop. The diagnostics for genuine examples are documented in Lange's reference and in the Wexler-Miller die variety guide; the fake detection requires knowing what a genuine D punch looks like on this specific die, which is not knowledge most collectors carry without reference material.⁴

The 1922 Plain is a different kind of key. Philadelphia and San Francisco struck no cents in 1922; Denver was the sole producer at 7,160,000 pieces. The dies wore quickly under volume, and on some pairs the mintmark became clogged with grease or debris and was then abraded away during die-cleaning attempts. Coins struck from these pairs show no mintmark at all and were initially assumed by some collectors to be Philadelphia pieces. When the Mint confirmed Denver's exclusive 1922 production, the no-mintmark coins were recognized as an error variety. The most desirable version, called the Strong Reverse, pairs a well-struck reverse with the missing mintmark, confirming that the die, not the strike, is the cause of the absence. Weakly struck no-D examples exist too and trade at considerably lower premiums.⁵

The 1931-S, with a mintage of 866,000, was the Depression's contribution to the key date list, but with a twist the 1877 Indian Head does not share. Dealers and speculators bought quantities of the 1931-S as it was released, correctly anticipating collector demand. The result is a date that is actually scarcer in genuinely circulated condition than in lower Mint State grades, because so many examples went from the Mint into dealer stock and then into collections without ever spending time in pocket change. Finding a worn 1931-S that actually circulated requires more searching than finding a Mint State one.⁶

The Penny Board and What It Did to the Hobby

The most consequential development for Lincoln cent collecting in the 1930s had nothing to do with mintage figures. Whitman Publishing introduced inexpensive cardboard penny boards in dime stores and variety shops across the country, giving collectors a cheap and satisfying way to organize a complete set by date and mint from pocket change. The boards turned the Lincoln cent into the entry point for millions of Americans, particularly children, into coin collecting. The 1909-S VDB became a household name among collectors during this period: the space every album had and almost no one could fill. The connection between Lincoln cent collecting and the American numismatic hobby has been structural ever since; the series is where most serious collectors start, and many never leave it entirely.

Steel in 1943, Copper by Accident

Copper was a critical war material. Its uses in ammunition casings, electrical wiring, and military hardware made it too valuable to commit to cents during World War II. In 1943 the Mint produced cents on zinc-coated steel planchets, the only year in the series when the coin's basic composition changed entirely. More than 1.09 billion steel cents were struck across all three mints. The public disliked them: they corroded in ordinary handling, were easily confused with dimes by sight, did not work in vending machines, and stuck to magnets.⁷ The government encouraged banks to remove them from circulation after the war, and millions were melted.

The transition to steel and back produced two of the most celebrated accidental rarities in American coinage. A small number of 1943 cents were struck on bronze planchets left in the presses from 1942 production. Approximately seventeen 1943 bronze cents have been authenticated: twelve attributed to Philadelphia, four to San Francisco, one to Denver. The Denver example sold for $1.7 million in January 2010 at Heritage Auctions.⁸ Conversely, when copper resumed in 1944, a small number of 1943 steel planchets were mistakenly loaded into the presses, producing 1944-dated steel cents. Only a handful are confirmed. A 1944-S steel cent graded Mint State 66 by PCGS, one of only two known at that grade, sold for $408,000 at Heritage Auctions' August 2021 ANA World's Fair of Money sale.⁹ Both errors are subject to pervasive counterfeiting. Any candidate requires authentication by PCGS or NGC before any value can be assigned; a magnet test confirms steel composition but does not authenticate a bronze example, because copper-plated steel coins also pass the magnet test without being genuine.

From 1944 through 1946, cents were struck in brass made largely from recycled military cartridge cases, yielding a copper alloy without the tin component of pre-war bronze. These shell-case cents are compositionally distinguishable through spectrographic analysis but appear visually similar to the surrounding years.

The 1955 Doubled Die: Twenty Thousand Coins Through a Cigarette Machine

The most famous variety of the entire series came from the Philadelphia Mint in 1955. During the hubbing process, one obverse die received a second impression at a slightly rotated angle, producing dramatic doubling of all the lettering and the date visible to the naked eye without magnification. The coins entered circulation primarily through vending machines; a cigarette machine company in Massachusetts was among the first businesses to find quantities in their cash boxes.¹⁰ The Mint determined that halting production and melting the affected coins would require scrapping millions of otherwise acceptable cents already packaged for distribution, and allowed the error to circulate. Estimates of the total released range from 20,000 to 24,000 pieces.

The 1955 DDO is one of the few significant American error coins with a specific and well-documented release story, and it has become one of the most widely recognized coins in the series among collectors well beyond the variety specialty. A circulated example in Good to Very Good typically trades in the $1,000 to $1,500 range; Mint State examples run considerably higher. As with all major Lincoln cent errors, authentication is essential: altered 1955 cents exist, though the doubling on a genuine DDO is pronounced enough that a competent forgery requires significant skill.¹¹

Building the Set

The Lincoln Wheat cent offers more collecting configurations across more budget levels than perhaps any other American series. A circulated date set of the common bronze issues from the late 1930s through 1958 can be assembled from pocket change and dealer junk boxes for a few dollars total. Adding the branch-mint dates from the teens and twenties raises the challenge and cost meaningfully. The 1909-S VDB, 1914-D, 1922 Plain, and 1931-S represent the four financial obstacles for a complete circulated date set, and prices for all four in problem-free circulated grades have been stable to rising for decades.

The wartime issues add a compositional type dimension that many collectors pursue separately: the 1942 final bronze year, the 1943 steel set across three mints, the 1944 shell-case brass, and the return to standard bronze in 1947. The 1943 bronze and 1944 steel errors are in a separate category entirely: acquisition targets measured in hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with authentication requirements that cannot be shortcut.

Error and variety collecting within the series is a specialty unto itself. Dozens of repunched mintmarks, doubled dies, and overmintmarks have been catalogued across fifty years of production. The Wexler-Miller reference covers die varieties comprehensively; Lange's complete guide provides the broader context. For key dates and significant errors, buy certified. The 1914-D counterfeiting problem and the 1943 bronze planchet fraud history make raw key-date Lincoln cents among the riskier purchases in American numismatics at any price.

The proof series represents a separate collecting dimension that this article does not address in full. Lincoln cent proofs were struck in three distinct phases, each with different surface characteristics. Matte proofs were produced from 1909 through 1916, with a sandblast or matte finish quite unlike the brilliant proofs of later years; the 1909 VDB matte proof is among the significant rarities of the early series, and matte proofs in general are less well understood by the broader market than their mirror-surface successors. Brilliant proofs resumed from 1936 through 1942, then continued from 1950 through 1958. Cameo and deep cameo examples from both the satin and mirror runs are genuinely scarce, particularly the pre-war issues where mintages were low and cameo contrast was not yet a systematic grading consideration. The 1936 proof in deep cameo is undervalued relative to its population for the same reasons the 1936 Mercury dime proof is, and the parallel is not accidental: both series saw their first modern proof years in 1936, and the market has been slower to price the cents than the dimes.