The Wheat Penny: A Collector's Guide

The wheat penny is the Lincoln cent as struck from 1909 to 1958, when its reverse carried two stalks of wheat framing the words ONE CENT. It is the coin most Americans have actually held: found in change for decades, saved in jars by the millions, and still turning up in inherited boxes. It is also, for the same reason, the coin people most often ask about and are most often disappointed by.

Designer and design

Victor David Brenner designed the obverse portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and he designed the original wheat reverse too. The Lincoln cent has been struck by the United States Mint every year since 1909, making it the longest-running design in American coinage, but the wheat ears lasted only until 1958. The cent has worn several reverses since and now carries a Union shield designed by Lyndall Bass in 2010.

The VDB

Brenner put his initials, VDB, on the reverse of the first 1909 cents. They were removed almost at once. They did not come back until 1918, when they were placed discreetly on the cutoff of Lincoln's bust on the obverse, where they have stayed ever since.

That brief window produced the most famous coin in the series, the 1909-S VDB: a first-year cent from San Francisco still carrying the initials. Every collector filling a Lincoln album needs one, which is exactly why it costs what it does. The mechanism is explained in key date coins.

What a wheat penny is made of

The interruption in 1943 is the famous one. Copper was needed for the war, so for a single year the cent was struck in zinc-plated steel, which is why 1943 cents look silver and why they rust. Steel is magnetic, and a magnet is the fastest test there is. The copper composition returned in 1944 and ran to 1982, when the cent became copper-plated zinc.

People bring us 1943 cents that are not magnetic, and 1944 cents that are. Both stories are told constantly and both are, overwhelmingly, altered or counterfeit coins. The real examples are famous, pedigreed, and worth a great deal, which is precisely why they are faked. See spotting counterfeit and altered coins.

Where the mint mark sits

Under the date, on the obverse. Wheat pennies carry a D for Denver or an S for San Francisco, or no mark at all, which means Philadelphia. Note that the cent never carries a P in ordinary years, an exception that survives to this day. And no cent dated 1965 through 1967 has any mint mark, because the Coinage Act of 1965 removed them from all circulating coins to discourage collecting. Those years fall after the wheat reverse ended, but the rule confuses people sorting a mixed jar. See coins with no mint mark.

Source: Lincoln cent, for designers, compositions and mint mark practice.