Lincoln Wheat Cents

Brenner's obverse portrait of Lincoln, based on a photograph by Mathew Brady, was straightforward and effective. It was the first regular-issue U.S. coin to depict an actual historical person rather than a symbolic Liberty figure, which made it mildly controversial at the time. Some critics argued that putting a president on the coinage smacked of monarchy. The objection did not gain much traction. The reverse carried two wheat stalks framing the words ONE CENT and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a simple composition that gave the coin its lasting nickname. Brenner's initials, V.D.B., appeared prominently on the reverse of the earliest strikes, at the bottom below the wheat stalks. The public noticed, the press complained about the engraver advertising himself on the nation's coinage, and the Mint removed the initials after just a few days of production. They would not reappear until 1918, when they were restored in tiny letters on Lincoln's shoulder, where most people would never notice them.

The first Lincoln cents were struck in August 1909, and the response was immediate. People lined up at banks and post offices to get the new coins, and the initial Philadelphia and San Francisco issues sold out quickly. The composition was the same bronze alloy the Indian Head cent had used since 1864, 95% copper with 5% tin and zinc, at 3.11 grams and 19 millimeters. Nothing changed mechanically. The coin just looked different, and the public loved it.

Production ran at high volume from the start. The Mint struck over 72 million cents in 1909 alone across Philadelphia and San Francisco, and output climbed from there. By the late 1910s and into the 1920s, annual production routinely exceeded 50 million and sometimes topped 100 million. Denver began striking Lincoln cents in 1911, adding a third mint to the mix. The sheer volume of production means that most dates in the Wheat cent series are common, a word that would have been unthinkable for any large cent date and applies to only a handful of Indian Heads.

The series saw one major composition change. In 1943, with copper needed for wartime ammunition production, the Mint switched to zinc-coated steel planchets. The resulting cents were silver-gray in color, looked nothing like any previous cent, and proved unpopular almost immediately. They were confused with dimes, they rusted, and vending machines rejected them. The Mint went back to a copper-based alloy in 1944, using recycled brass shell casings that gave the 1944-1946 cents a slightly different color than the pre-war issues. The standard bronze composition returned in 1947 and continued through the end of the Wheat reverse in 1958.

The 1943 steel cents and the 1944 steel cents are often confused in the public imagination, but the real rarities run the other way. A few 1943 cents were accidentally struck on leftover bronze planchets, and a few 1944 cents were struck on leftover steel planchets. Both are genuine rarities. Bowers notes that perhaps 20 to 30 bronze 1943 cents are known across all three mints, and the 1944 steel cents are similarly scarce. These are the kinds of coins that make national news when they turn up, which happens every few years and generates a predictable wave of people checking their pocket change.

The key date of the series is the 1909-S V.D.B., where the low San Francisco mintage of 484,000 pieces combined with the short production run before the initials were removed creates genuine scarcity. It has been the most famous Lincoln cent since the day it was issued, and finding one in any grade has never been cheap. The 1909-S without V.D.B. is also a semi-key at 1,825,000 struck. Other scarce dates include the 1914-D (1,193,000 mintage), the 1922 "Plain" or "No D" variety where a worn Denver die failed to leave a visible mintmark, and the 1931-S (866,000 pieces). The 1924-D and 1926-S are semi-keys that turn up often enough in lower grades but get scarce in a hurry above Fine.

The doubled die obverse of 1955 deserves its own mention. A dramatic misalignment during die preparation produced a strongly doubled image visible to the naked eye on the date, LIBERTY, and IN GOD WE TRUST. The Mint apparently noticed the problem but released the coins anyway, deciding that the expense of pulling them was not worth the trouble. Somewhere around 20,000 to 24,000 are estimated to have reached circulation. The 1955 doubled die became one of the most famous error coins in American numismatics, and examples still turn up in circulation finds occasionally, though less often than the hopeful stories on the internet would suggest.

Wheat cents circulated through a period of enormous change in American daily life. When the series began in 1909, a cent bought a piece of candy, a newspaper, or a gumball. Penny postcards cost a penny. Penny arcades were still a going concern. By the time the Wheat reverse ended in 1958, a cent's purchasing power had been cut by inflation to a fraction of what it had been, and the things you could buy for a single coin were dwindling. But cents still mattered. Sales tax made odd amounts necessary, vending machines took them, and cash transactions still generated pennies in change at every store in America. The coins wore down with use, as copper always does, though the enormous mintages meant there were always more where those came from. Wheat cents circulated alongside their Memorial reverse replacements well into the 1970s and 1980s, gradually thinning out as the older coins were pulled, lost, or collected. Finding a Wheat cent in pocket change was an everyday occurrence for decades after the design ended, and even now one turns up once in a while, dark and worn smooth, a small piece of a very long production run.

Sources: Q. David Bowers, A Guide Book of Lincoln Cents (Whitman Publishing, 2016); Walter Breen, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins (Doubleday, 1988); David W. Lange, The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents (DLRC Press, 2005); R.S. Yeoman & Jeff Garrett, A Guide Book of United States Coins (Whitman Publishing, 2025); PCGS CoinFacts.