AboutMyCoinCheat sheet
Every date, variety and error in this series worth a second look. No prices: which of these are scarce has been settled for a century, and what they fetch is true for a week.
Dates and mint marks5
- 1909-S VDB
- 1931-S
- 1914-D
- 1909-S
- 1924-D
Read the date and the mint mark. No magnification, no judgement — either it says 1932-D or it does not.
Varieties3
- 1922 plain, the cent with no D
- 1955 doubled die obverse
- 1944-D over S
Look at one specific feature under magnification and decide what you are seeing. Most candidates are not.
Mint errors2
- 1943 bronze cent
- 1944 steel cent
Weigh it or put a magnet to it. These are settled by a measurement, and looking at them settles nothing.
The series at a glance
- Struck
- 1909–1958
- Designer
- Victor David Brenner
- Obverse
- Abraham Lincoln facing right
- Reverse
- Two ears of wheat framing ONE CENT
- Edge
- Plain
What it is made of, and when
The metal changed partway through, so the date decides the metal and the metal decides most of the value.
| Years | Composition | Filed under |
|---|---|---|
| 1909–1942 | 95% copper, 5% tin and zinc | Copper and bronze |
| 1943 | Zinc-plated steel | Steel |
| 1944–1946 | 95% copper, 5% zinc | Copper and bronze |
| 1947–1958 | 95% copper, 5% tin and zinc | Copper and bronze |
Mints and mint marks
On the obverse, below the date. No mark at all means Philadelphia.
| Mint mark | Mint | Years | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | Philadelphia | 1909–1921, 1923–1958 | Struck no cents in 1922 |
| D | Denver | 1911–1920, 1922, 1924–1958 | The only mint to strike cents in 1922, and it struck none in 1921 or 1923 |
| S | San Francisco | 1909–1921, 1923–1931, 1935–1955 | Struck no cents from 1932 to 1934, and none after 1955 |
Key dates
These are the issues worth conspicuously more than the rest of the run, and every one of them is identified by reading the date and the mint mark rather than by judging the coin. Mintages are the mint’s own published figures. No prices: which dates are scarce has been settled for a century, and what they fetch is true for a week.
| Date | Mintage | Why it is scarce |
|---|---|---|
| 1909-S VDB | 484,000 | The key date of the series and the one everybody checks for: the designer’s initials V.D.B. at the foot of the reverse, on a San Francisco coin. They were removed within weeks of the cent going into production after complaints that they were too prominent. |
| 1931-S | 866,000 | The lowest mintage of the series after the 1909-S VDB, struck in the depths of the Depression when almost nobody needed new cents. Enough were saved at the time that it is scarce rather than rare. |
| 1914-D | 1,193,000 | Scarce in every grade and heavily counterfeited, usually by adding a D to a 1914 Philadelphia cent or by altering a 1944-D. |
| 1909-S | 1,825,000 | The plain-reverse San Francisco coin of the first year, without the initials. Scarce in its own right and routinely confused with the VDB, which is worth several times more. |
| 1924-D | 2,520,000 | The scarcest Denver cent of the twenties, and one usually found well worn because nobody set them aside. |
Varieties
A variety is not a key date. A key date is read off the coin with no judgement at all; a variety asks you to look at one specific feature and decide what you are seeing, which is why each row below says what to look at rather than what to look for in general.
| Variety | What to look at |
|---|---|
| 1922 plain, the cent with no D | A 1922 cent with no mint mark at all below the date. Denver was the only mint to strike cents that year, so every genuine 1922 cent is a Denver coin and a missing D means the die was clogged.Only one die pair produces the recognised variety, and it is identified by a strong reverse rather than by the absent D alone -- a weakly struck D that has simply worn away is the common coin. It is among the most counterfeited cents there is, usually by grinding the D off an ordinary 1922-D, and it is worth certifying before it is worth valuing. |
| 1955 doubled die obverse | Heavy doubling on LIBERTY, on IN GOD WE TRUST and on the date, strong enough to read across the room with no loupe at all.Machine doubling is flat and shelf-like and is far commoner; the genuine variety shows two rounded, fully separated images. This is the most faked doubled die in American coinage. |
| 1944-D over S | The remains of an S mint mark showing underneath the D below the date.The undertype is faint on a worn coin and is easily confused with a damaged or repunched D. It needs magnification and, on anything but a sharp example, certification. |
Mint errors
An error is not a variety. A variety is a die, so every coin struck from it carries the same feature and you identify it by looking. An error is one coin going wrong — the wrong blank fed into the press — and looking at it proves nothing, because the mistake is in the metal rather than in the design. A scale and a magnet settle every row below in under a minute, which is why the confirmed population is in the dozens and the number of people who think they have one is not.
| Error | Confirmed | What happened, and how to settle it |
|---|---|---|
| 1943 bronze cent | Seventeen across the three mints: twelve from Philadelphia, four from San Francisco and a single Denver coin. | A bronze blank left in the press from 1942 and struck with 1943 dies, in the one year every cent was meant to be steel.A 1943 cent that a magnet will NOT pick up, and that weighs about 3.11 grams rather than 2.70. Ordinary 1943 cents are zinc-plated steel and stick firmly.Nearly every 1943 cent that looks copper is an ordinary steel cent that has been copper-plated, and those are magnetic. A genuine one is a bronze blank left in the press from 1942; fewer than thirty are known across all three mints, and no coin is worth valuing on this basis until a grading service has confirmed it. |
| 1944 steel cent | Around thirty-five: twenty-seven from Philadelphia, seven to ten from Denver and one from San Francisco. | A steel blank left over from 1943 and struck with 1944 dies, after the mint had gone back to brass.A 1944 cent that a magnet DOES pick up, and that weighs about 2.70 grams rather than 3.11. Ordinary 1944 cents are brass and are not magnetic.The mirror of the error above and the same warning: a steel 1943 cent with the 3 altered to a 4 is the usual fake, and the alteration is visible under magnification. Around thirty are known. |
Not an appraisal, and not an authentication. A coin worth four figures because of a variety or an error is worth certifying by a grading service before it is worth anything at all. Each one is a specialty with its own literature behind it.