The 100th year of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth, 1909, saw the Great Emancipator honored on the United States one cent coin. Lincoln’s portrait replaced the Native American head dress-wearing Liberty figure of the Indian head pennies. From 1909 until 1958, the reverse side of the Lincoln cent showed ears of wheat, and the coins today are known universally by collectors as wheat cents.
Wheat pennies still turn up occasionally in regular commerce at shops and restaurants, but the best examples of wheat pennies are for-sale listings in the collectors’ market. Some of the most beloved — 1909-S copies with the VDB initials, for example — are priced out of many collectors’ price ranges, but some very nice copies of other Lincoln wheat cents can be found in the voluminous offers at any given time. Lincoln wheat pennies are mostly copper, except in 1943 when the realities of World War II forced mints to make (now-collectible) steel versions.
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In 1959, the reverse of the Lincoln cent was changed to a depiction of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to mark the 150th year since Lincoln’s 1809 birth.
