Four score and seven years ago this August 2nd, our mintmasters brought forth upon this nation a new coin, conceived in lieu of Miss Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that genuine American heroes belong upon our coinage rather than allegorical figures. I refer, of course, to the Lincoln cent.

Now we are engaged in a great debate whether this coin, or any coin of such low face value, can long survive the ravages of inflation and public indifference. Logically it should be discontinued by a simple act of Congress, but then logically we should also have a balanced budget AND national health care, and Congress does not seem inclined to follow either course of action.

The Lincoln cent was created in 1909 by Victor David Brenner at the request of outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt, whose great personal interest in our coinage was second only to Washington's. Roosevelt's friendship with the noted artist Augustus St. Gaudens had resulted in the creation of the glorious Indian Head $10 and St. Gaudens $20 in 1907, and the suggestion of another friend of his had led to the creation of Bela Lyon Pratt's "incused" Indian Head $2-1/2 and $5 in 1908.

Roosevelt had met Brenner while posing for a medal that would ultimately be given to workers on the Panama Canal project. Upon seeing a model for a bronze plaquette that Brenner was planning for the centennial of Lincoln's birth in 1909, Roosevelt immediately recommended to the Secretary of the Treasury that the portrait be placed upon a coin as well. A commemorative half dollar with Lincoln on the obverse and an eagle on the reverse was briefly considered, but the symbolic gesture of placing it on the coin most familiar to the common man quickly placed it on the Cent.

Brenner, being an artist, had wanted to sign his work with his full last name, Brenner, on the obverse. When told this was quite impossible, he suggested placing it on the reverse just inside the lower rim at 6 o'clock.

This also was too bold, and when production began only the monogram V.D.B. appeared between the ends of the two wheat ears. St. Gaudens had gotten his monogram just below the date on the $20, and Pratt had placed his B.L.P. just above the date on the smaller gold, but Brenner had the misfortune of having his coin come out after his benefactor had left office on March 4, 1909.

The Secretary of the Treasury under President Taft, Franklin MacVeagh, objected to the appearance of the V.D.B. on the reverse, and he ordered it to be removed and replaced with the single initial B on the obverse at the truncation of the bust. The Mint's Chief Engraver, Charles Barber, already unhappy with the fact that the gold designs had been done by "outsiders," quickly said that this was impossible in the space available without delaying production for many weeks. However, he cheerfully offered to grind the V.D.B. off of the hub being used to make working dies, a matter of but a few minutes work that would not slow up production.

It is assumed today that Barber did not want Brenner's initial to be confused with his own B, which already appeared on the neck of the Barber Dime, Quarter and Half Dollar. Barber died in 1917, and his long-suffering Assistant of 38 years, George T. Morgan, quietly restored the V.D.B. to the coin on the base of Lincoln's shoulder in 1918.

The initial coinage with the V.D.B. saw the creation of the most popular Lincoln cent, the 1909-SVDB of which but 484,000 pieces were struck. Millions of people collect Lincoln cents, but only this number of sets can ever be complete. (The number of 1909-SVDB cents known decreases every year as a certain numismatic publication drops one into circulation at an ANA host city, never to be seen again. Eventually they will be gone.)

Fortunately for collectors today, the publicity over the removal of the letters caused much of the coinage from either Mint with the V.D.B. on the reverse to be hoarded out of circulation in 1909, preserving many of them in relatively high grades. The overlooked 1914-D is much scarcer in high grades, and the 1955 Doubled Die obverse error is much rarer in any grade, but the 1909-SVDB is the one that every collector wants.

Now the rest of Roosevelt's numismatic children are long gone, except for the pale imitation of the St. Gaudens $20 currently used on the American Eagle gold coins, but the Lincoln cent goes on and on. Over the years it has been struck in four different compositions with two different reverse designs, but through it all Old Abe has peered peacefully off into the distance at the viewer's right.

(Recently a local Chicago radio station got all excited when a listener asked it why Lincoln faced to the right while "all" of our other coins faced left, the caller wondering at the political significance of this "left-leaning" tendency. After I stopped laughing I tried to call in to point out that Susan B. Anthony and Ben Franklin and many expressions of Miss Liberty faced to the right at the artists' prerogative, but I was unable to get thru to correct them, and another urban legend was born.)

The Lincoln cent was struck in Bronze (95% Copper, approx. 4% Zinc and 1% Tin) from 1909 to 1942, though some 1942 pieces appear to lack the Tin, which was in short supply due to the Japanese occupation of what is now Malaysia. Because Copper was needed to make Brass shell casings during World War II, the cent was changed to Zinc-coated Steel for 1943 only. Recycled Brass shell casings were used to make cents from 1944 through 1946, with enough Copper added to bring the content up to 95% Copper and 5% Zinc.

The Bronze alloy was resumed in 1947, and continued into 1962. During the middle of that year the rising price of Tin caused it to be eliminated from the cent, making its alloy Brass once again. The Brass alloy continued into the middle of 1982, at which point the coin was debased to a Copper plating over a mostly Zinc core, with just a trace of Copper allowed in the core to permit spoiled blanks and coins to be recycled into new cores without the Copper coatings being refined out.

Knowing the correct compositions is important, as some of the greatest rarities in the series have come from incorrect compositions. For years numismatists and even most non-collectors were aware that 1943 "copper pennies" from any of the three Mints were worth "a lot of money," without knowing that they were the result of a few leftover 1942 Bronze blanks being struck when production of the 1943 Steel cents began.

The hype was caused by various publishers of coin premium books who advertised in the non-numismatic press that with their book you could find valuable coins in your pocket change, especially the 1943 "copper penny." My recollection from the early 1960s is that most people buying the books automatically assumed that the 1943 was worth "$10,000!," in a day when $10,000 would buy you a decent 1804 Silver Dollar. Nevertheless, they were worth a few thousand dollars even then, back when that would buy you a new car and not just the tin can this is being written on.

If nothing else, the hype over the 1943 "copper penny" caused a lot of people to look at their pocket change, and led some of them to begin collecting coins. In this respect it was just as valuable to the spread of the hobby as B. Max Mehl's ads in the 1930s offering the grand sum of $50 to anybody who found a 1913 Liberty nickel, if only you bought his book as hundreds of thousands did.

Curiously, the mate to the 1943 Bronze Cent, the 1944 Steel Cent struck on leftover planchets from 1943, never caught on in the public's mind, presumably due to the lack of hype over it. There are far fewer 1944 Steel cents from any Mint known, but they usually bring only half of what a 1944 Bronze one will bring. In Marketing class back in college we were told that a chicken clucks when it lays an egg and a duck does not, and when was the last time you saw anybody buy a duck egg?

The other great off-metal rarities in the Lincoln Cent series occurred on 1974-dated trial Cents struck in Aluminum and in Bronze-clad Steel. In 1973 the Treasury Department, faced with the rising cost of Copper, prudently began preparing alternatives for its Cent coinage.

Its first choice was Aluminum, and a test run of some 1.5 million 1974-dated Cents struck in the Summer of 1973 convinced it that it could coin the metal. It then sent a few dozen of the pieces to the appropriate committees in Congress, and formally requested authorization to change the composition to Aluminum beginning with the 1974 coinage. The 1974 date was used on the trial strikes in anticipation of receiving the authorization, which would then have made them common and of no particular value.

Unfortunately for the Treasury, the Copper mining and vending machine lobbies fought against the change, presenting heart-rendering testimony from doctors claiming that Aluminum "pennies" swallowed by little children would not show up on X-rays. The facts that one industry would lose a customer and the other would have to spend money adjusting its machines were not as openly stressed.

The Bronze-clad Steel composition was then suggested as an alternative, and trial strikes made in it, but a Watergate-obsessed Congress was in no mood to make a decision involving mere money. No change was made at that time, and the trial strikes came to the attention of the hobby years later. One of the Aluminum strikings is currently in the Smithsonian Institution, and other trial strikes are unaccounted for.

What is the future of the Cent? Monetarily it is insignificant. Inflation has reduced its purchasing power to the point that its only function is to make change for the odd amounts of sales tax charged in different cities, counties and states. The unobtrusive "penny" gumball machine of my youth now stands five feet high and dispenses a super gumball down a long, spiral chute for a quarter. Many stores have bowls of cents at their cash registers, to be had for the taking when needed to make change.

Various agencies that have studied our monetary system in recent years have unanimously recommended that the cent be discontinued. Only the zinc manufacturing industry supports it, just as the copper manufacturing industry did before it. However, no Congress is willing to take the responsibility of making a decision that will be condemned as "inflationary" by those people ignorant of economic reality.

New discoveries such as the 1995 Doubled Die Cent have increased public awareness of the Cent, just as the 1955, 1972, 1983 and 1984 Doubled Dies had done before them. Perhaps the introduction of the new $100 bills this year will cause Congress to become aware of the rest of our money as well. If they do, the Cent as we know it may disappear, and with it the last numismatic legacy of the first President Roosevelt.

Originally published in COINage magazine in June, 1996. Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1998 by Thomas K. DeLorey.

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