Let’s start in the year where the Lincoln Cent began, 1909. Many times when I discover a cent dated 1909 or 1909 VDB, it is in Very Good-8 (VG-8) condition or better. I think that, as we do today, many people saved a few examples of the then new Lincoln cent issue thinking that they will be worth something someday.

1909 Lincoln Cent - WORN, DAMAGED and CORRODED

Consequently, while roll searching I have found a wide range of conditions of 1909 and 1909 Lincoln, VDB cents and although most would be graded as Very Good-8 (VG-8) or better the conditions vary from a low of About Good-3 (AG-3) to a high grade of Mint State-65 (MS-65).

1909 VDB Lincoln Cent - Mint State-65 (MS-65)

As we get past the first year where things can be a little skewed due to hoarding, I see a great many of the earlier dated Lincoln cents that are “worn to the bone”, so to speak. A little research indicates that during the early days of the Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent, a cent (penny) actually had some buying power.

Wheat Ears Lincoln Cent - Heavily Worn

Based upon the information found at this local Washington web source,
http://www.skagitpublishing.com/ourcentury/1910-1919.html
you could purchase the following items in the State of Washington during the years listed. I am sure that these numbers would be comparable anywhere else in the country.

1910 - Children’s underwear is 20 cents each, a man’s shirt is 95 cents, a work shirt is 38 cents and a suit is $30.00. A five bedroom cottage is listed at $1500.00.

1911 - A pound of baking soda costs 25 cents.

1912 - Sunday dinner at the cafe in the New Wilson Hotel (the most modern hostelry in the area of Anacortes, WA) is 50 cents and the menu includes relishes, soup, sole, chips, peas, apple fritters, and mutton in caper sauce, spring chicken, beef tenderloin or prime rib veal.

1914 - An eight-reel movie show is 10 cents for children and 20 cents for adults. James O’Neal stars in Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” at the Empire Theater. Charles Chaplin was a favorite of the time.
Steak is 18 cents a pound and prime rib roast 16 cents a pound. Two big cans of pineapple are 35 cents.

1917 - Hamburger steak is 2 pounds for 25 cents at the Anacortes Market. City workers earn $2.50 a day for street workers.

1918 -Sauerkraut is 15 cents for a large can and an Anacortes to Seattle roundtrip on a steamer costs $2.50.

1915 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent - Average Circulated

As we continue onward and according to an online article found at:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/415102/a_forties_pennys_worth_what_could_you.html?cat=3

We find that…

Back in 1910, a dollar in your wallet would buy you 20 Coca-Cola’s or even a real, film camera from a drug store. You could purchase a six-room cottage in the Island Park area of Fargo, North Dakota for just under $2000.00!

The same source concentrating on what can be purchased for a cent (penny) in the 1940s indicates, “one [cent] could buy bubble gum, licorice candy, jaw breakers, peppermint sticks, grab bags, a small bag of pop corn or salty peanuts, a candy bar or a lollipop, frozen cubes of orange flavored ice called Dainties or a cup filled to the rim with lemon flavored shaved ice. You could also use a penny to buy peanut butter taffy and many other marvelous tasting morsels”.

In the forties, “Children could try their luck on a cent punch board, 100 chances on a board for a penny apiece. The holder of the winning number sometimes received a beautiful doll or a pair of roller skates. A row of penny vending machines lined up against a wall paid off in tin trinkets or a variety of candies”. Also mentioned, “The arcade buildings at carnivals or country fairs featured all kinds of penny activities. At movie viewing machines, one could see Charlie Chaplin or Krazy Kat flicks for a penny. For two pennies, one could ride the Merry-Go-Round”.

MY FIRST CONCLUSION IS THAT THE CENT (PENNY) REALLY HAD SOME BUYING POWER AND IT ACTUALLY CIRCULATED.

NEXT….

My observations on wear seem to fit a pattern related to the mintage figures of the coins. The images are designed to help with bolstering up my observations.

1913 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

I see a lot of wear on most of the one cent coins that I find that are dated from 1910 through 1919. I think that stems from high consumer use and mintage figures that are small when compared to today’s mintage figures. I can easily imagine that this Lincoln cent dated 1913 with a mintage total of just more than 76.5 million pieces was used very heavily as the wear due to circulation is quite extreme.

1919 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

The mintage figure for this 1919 Philadelphia Mint cent which was high by the standards of the time with more than 392 million pieces is dwarfed by the number of cents manufactured at the Denver Mint facility in 1969 with more than 4 billion pieces from that mint alone. It seems that as we exit the “teen years” and head into the “twenties”, I notice that the conditions of older Lincoln Cents begins to improve.

So for the period of 1909 to 1919, it seems that a finite and smaller number of coins circulated heavily and as a consequence wore out to a greater degree than the cents to come.

I generally see less wear on the cents of the 1920s as each year of mintage, although still not in huge numbers adds to the previous year’s supply of cents. With more cents in circulation, there has to be less wear per coin as more coins are passing through the hands of the public. Although still quite worn, these are not as worn as some of the earlier Lincoln cents.

1926 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

By the time we get to the 1930s, the economy was such a mess that coins probably did not circulate as much, consequently I see even less wear on coins of the thirties. There seems to me to be a real turning point somewhere in the 1935/1936 range as I see even less wear on cents of those years and the conditions of wheat ears cents improves dramatically from that point on. Again, I feel that more coins added to the overall pool of cents in circulation would lower the amount of circulation wear on a per coin basis.

1936 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

The Mint keeps churning away and in 1941 alone, all three mints churn out more than a billion cents in total. In 1944 and 1945, The Philadelphia Mint produces more than a billion coins each and that doesn’t include cents produced at the Denver and San Francisco Mints during those years. This 1940 cent is pretty typical of many of the 1940s era cents that I have found over the years.

1940 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

The supply of cents in circulation is exploding. As a result, I think we see less wear on coins of the forties which also effects the amount of wear on coins of the thirties since there are more one cent coins circulating. This 1944 cent has more wear than any other cent of the forties that I could find in my collection of circulation find “wheaties”.

1944 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent - More Wear Than Most

NOW…

Let’s move into the beginnings of what I think is “our era”, the fifties. Many of us started to collect coins in the fifties and sixties. Without going into the specifics of mintage figures, it is safe to say that billions of cents were added to the streams of commerce from 1950 to 1958, with the latter date being the last year of issue of the Lincoln Wheat Ears cents. I would say that the amount of wear on most of the cents of the fifties that I still find in circulation is comparable to the 1958 cent shown here.

1958 Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

That influx of cents into circulation alone would slow down the wear on the newer coins at that time. Keep in mind that in 1955, a 1935 cent would have been circulating for only 20 years and probably not being used to the extent of any coins still circulating and dated in the teens. Cents minted from 1909 through 1919 were more heavily used in the first place as they purchased more and by 1955, any 1915 cent for example if found in circulation has now been in circulation for forty years. Find that same 1915 dated cent in 1965 and it has been in the streams of commerce for fifty years.

SO…MY NEXT CONCLUSION IS THAT WE REMEMBER SEEING THOSE REALLY WORN CENTS THAT WE MAY HAVE EVEN PULLED FROM CIRCULATION AND THEY WERE WORN DUE TO AGE AND THE AMOUNT OF SERVICE THEY PROVIDED TO CONSUMERS IN THEIR LIFETIMES.

ENTER…THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL REVERSE CENT

During this period, inflation was rising and the cent began to lose its buying power. As a kid in the late fifties and early sixties, I remember being able to buy “Bazooka” bubble gum for a penny, I remember gumball machines that took pennies and I remember getting two cents back as the “deposit” on a bottle of “Coke”. The cent was beginning to lose it’s value and I remember “pitching pennies” against the back wall of the church behind my house. I don’t remember much of anything else in the late fifties or early sixties that could be done with a cent. Even the arcade machines at Coney Island were upgraded to take nickels although I remember just a few left that used “pennies” as I used to try to beat my brother out to get to those machines before he could. My favorite penny arcade machine had a Popeye cartoon in it.

1960 D Lincoln Memorial Reverse Cent - Large Date Variety

ENTER…THE COIN COLLECTOR!

In the period from the forties to the sixties, there was more of an awareness by the general public that some coins could be valuable. I have a copy of B. Max Mehl’s, The Star Rare Coin Encyclopedia printed in 1944. That small book gave the general public the information needed to find scarce coins in circulation as well as the information needed to identify rare coins that may have been stashed away in grandpa’s old trunk up in the attic. I also still have my old copy of a “Checklist of Coins” for Library of Coins Albums that I got from Gimbel’s Coin Departrment when they were in the Roosevelt Field Shopping Center in Westbury, NY. I remember seeing advertisements in comic books and other places where they would essentially be asking the general public about discovering valuable coins that could be found in circulation that were worth something to collectors. If you found one of those “rare” coins, they were buying. As a kid, I remember seeing CoinWorld and in the late sixties, I would go to the public library to read the copies that they received. I usually had to wait for someone to put down the copy of the magazine before I could read it as the interest in coins seemed to be quite high.

As the Memorial Cent made its debut in 1959, people began to hoard Lincoln Wheat Ears cents further reducing the degradation of those coins. Many casual coin collectors as well as the “general public” had the impression that the old “Wheaties” were going to become rare and valuable. In fact though, a great many of the post 1955 cents that I find are still in excellent condition. This 1958 D cent is an example of one that has not aged too badly at all and yet is is worth about fifteen cents in today’s market.

1958 D Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent

Unfortunately, the 1958 D Lincoln Wheat Ears cents that the public started piling away along with many other cents never got to be worth much. Since people like us who were interested in older coins would be more conscious of the Wheat cents that we found in circulation. We would notice that the older ones from the 1909 through 1919 era that we found were really worn out due most likely to the reasons that I suggested above.

OK…WHY IS THERE LITTLE WEAR ON MEMORIAL CENTS?

I think that this is a result of an unbelievable number of cents being placed into circulation, in combination with a lower buying power causing the actual circulation of the coins to diminish. Even doing “bad math” I come up with around 4 trillion cents produced between 1959 and today. Also, I can’t think of anything that I can buy for a cent. Even the gumball machines that in years past used “pennies” require a quarter dollar in order to get a small bit of gum or some kind of tiny novelty item. An overabundance of cents and no circulation equals no wear.

A Random Roll of Cents That Was Recently Opened

For kicks, I took a picture of a roll of cents I had that I just got from the bank two weeks ago. I looked through the roll and I then photographed four cents, dated in the 1980s that had emerged from that roll. The 1983 D cents are 26 years old and the other two are around 20 years old. They are still in Mint State (MS) condition.

This, to me is further proof of limited use and circulation on the part of the Lincoln cent. It is my experience that banks and credit unions are not even ordering cents to the extent that they did years ago. Even store owners like Starbucks and convenience stores recycle cents in their “take a penny” containers so that there is less of a need to use “pennies” as change.

SO…LESS CIRCULATION, LESS NEED FOR CENTS AND THE RESULT IS THAT LINCOLN MEMORIAL REVERSE CENTS STILL LOOK PRETTY DARN GOOD WHEN THEY ARE FOUND IN CIRCULATION.