AUGUST 2
1909•Lincoln Wheat Cent
2012•2012 Silver Eagle Uncirculated Released
The Lincoln Wheat Cent Is Released
On August 2, 1909, the United States officially released the Lincoln cent, introducing Abraham Lincoln's portrait to everyday American coinage on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Designed by sculptor Victor David Brenner, the new cent replaced the Indian Head cent and broke a long-standing tradition against placing identifiable historical figures on regular circulating U.S. coins. Public demand was immediate and enormous. Crowds lined up for the new cents, banks and Treasury outlets rationed supplies, and enterprising sellers resold the one-cent pieces for premiums. Within days, however, controversy erupted over Brenner's prominent V.D.B. initials on the reverse. Production was halted and the initials removed, creating the famous 1909 VDB and key-date 1909-S VDB varieties. The August 2 release began what became the longest-running basic coin portrait in United States history.
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A New Cent for Lincoln's Centennial
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809.
As the centennial of his birth approached, Americans planned memorials, ceremonies, publications, and monuments.
President Theodore Roosevelt had already launched an ambitious effort to improve the artistic quality of American coinage.
A Lincoln coin fit naturally into both movements.
On August 2, 1909, the idea moved from artistic project to circulating money.
The United States Mint's historical timeline specifically records August 2, 1909 as the date the Lincoln cent was issued.
Mint historical materials also state that more than 22 million of the new cents had already been struck at Philadelphia before public release.
The distinction matters.
Production had begun weeks earlier.
August 2 was the public debut—the day Americans could actually obtain and spend the new Lincoln cents.
The Lincoln cent represented a major philosophical break.
For generations, regular United States coins had relied on allegorical figures of Liberty rather than portraits of presidents or other historical people.
George Washington himself had famously resisted the monarchical tradition of placing a ruler's portrait on national coinage.
Commemorative coins had depicted identifiable people before 1909, but the Lincoln cent brought a real historical person to ordinary circulating coinage.
Why Lincoln?
By the early twentieth century, Lincoln's national reputation had grown enormously.
He was remembered as the president who preserved the Union and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
The 1909 centennial of his birth created a powerful commemorative moment.
Unlike a medal or limited commemorative issue, a cent could place Lincoln's image into the hands of virtually every American.
The humble denomination gave the tribute extraordinary reach.
President Theodore Roosevelt disliked what he considered uninspired American coinage.
He admired the sculptural beauty of ancient Greek coins and wanted modern U.S. money to possess similar artistic strength.
His collaboration with Augustus Saint-Gaudens produced the famous 1907 gold designs.
After Saint-Gaudens's death, Roosevelt continued supporting artistic improvement.
Victor David Brenner entered this environment at exactly the right moment.
Brenner was born in the Russian Empire and immigrated to the United States in 1890.
He established himself in New York as an engraver, sculptor, and medalist.
Training in Paris strengthened his medallic style.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, he had developed a reputation for portrait work.
His artistic path eventually brought him into contact with President Roosevelt.
Brenner had already created a Lincoln plaque and medal before the cent project.
His right-facing bust became the basis for the coin's obverse.
Lincoln is shown from the shoulders upward.
IN GOD WE TRUST appears above.
LIBERTY is placed behind the portrait.
The date appears in front.
The design was simple, direct, and immediately recognizable.
The reverse framed the denomination with two stylized wheat stalks.
ONE CENT dominates the center.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA appears below it.
E PLURIBUS UNUM stretches across the top.
The wheat ears symbolized agricultural abundance and national prosperity.
They gave the coin its enduring collector nickname: the Wheat cent or Wheat penny.
The Indian Head Cent Gives Way
The new coin replaced James B. Longacre's Indian Head cent, introduced in 1859.
That design had circulated through the Civil War, Reconstruction, western expansion, and the rise of industrial America.
After half a century, it was deeply familiar.
Replacing it with the portrait of a president was therefore a dramatic visual change.
Everyday Americans noticed immediately.
The Philadelphia Mint began producing the new cents before release so that adequate supplies would be available.
Contemporary numismatic reporting noted that more than 22 million cents had been struck in Philadelphia by the end of June.
PCGS records the eventual 1909 VDB Philadelphia mintage at 27,995,000.
Despite this enormous advance production, release-day demand overwhelmed available supplies in many locations.
The new cent was not quietly introduced.
Lines formed at the Treasury Building in Washington, the Philadelphia Mint, Sub-Treasury locations, banks, and other distribution points.
People wanted souvenirs of Lincoln's centennial and examples of the first presidential circulating coin.
In Philadelphia, distribution had to be limited.
The enormous public response turned a one-cent coin into a national event.
Scarcity on release day created instant speculation.
Individuals who obtained quantities of the new cents resold them for more than face value.
Contemporary reports described prices ranging from several cents to much larger premiums for a coin whose official value was one cent.
The phenomenon sounds remarkably modern.
A highly anticipated Mint release generated lines, rationing, flipping, and secondary-market premiums almost immediately.
At the bottom of the reverse, between the wheat stalks, appeared three letters: V.D.B.
They stood for Victor David Brenner.
Artist initials were not unprecedented on American coins.
But Brenner's initials were prominent enough to attract criticism.
Some observers viewed them as excessive advertising by the designer.
The controversy exploded within days of the cent's release.
The Mint Stops Production
Treasury officials responded rapidly.
Production of the V.D.B. version was suspended while the Mint prepared a revised design without the initials.
PCGS research shows that Philadelphia had struck nearly 28 million VDB cents before the change.
San Francisco had much less time.
Its VDB production occurred in only a narrow window at the beginning of August.
That difference created one of America's most famous key dates.
The San Francisco Mint struck only 484,000 1909-S VDB cents.
That tiny production compared with Philadelphia's tens of millions made the issue famous among collectors.
The 1909-S VDB became one of the classic keys to the Lincoln cent series.
Generations of collectors filling blue folders or albums encountered the same frustrating empty space.
It remains one of the most recognizable rare dates in American numismatics.
Some coins are rare but obscure.
The 1909-S VDB is the opposite.
It belongs to a series collected by millions of people.
Its rarity is easy to understand.
It comes from the first year, carries the controversial initials, has a low mintage, and bears the desirable S mintmark.
Those characteristics combine into an almost perfect collector story.
High values inevitably attract fraud.
Ordinary 1909 VDB cents have been altered by adding false S mintmarks.
Other coins have had initials manipulated or added.
Specialists study mintmark shape, placement, die characteristics, and surface evidence.
For expensive examples, professional authentication is particularly important.
The popularity of the 1909-S VDB makes it a perennial target for counterfeiters.
After the controversy, the initials were removed from the reverse.
Later 1909 cents were produced without them.
Brenner's identifying letters then disappeared from Lincoln cents for years.
The portrait remained, but the artist's visible credit did not.
This created two major Philadelphia varieties in the first year: 1909 VDB and 1909 without VDB.
Brenner Gets His Initials Back
In 1918, VDB returned.
This time the initials were placed discreetly on the obverse at the base of Lincoln's shoulder.
They were far smaller and less conspicuous than the original reverse initials.
The compromise endured.
Brenner lived to see his authorship restored to the coin.
His initials remain associated with Lincoln cents today.
Collectors can find both Indian Head and Lincoln cents dated 1909.
They can also find Lincoln cents with and without VDB.
Philadelphia and San Francisco produced different combinations.
This makes 1909 one of the richest transition years in small-cent history.
A single date documents the end of one half-century design and the beginning of another that would last even longer.
The Mint also produced Proof Lincoln cents in 1909 using a matte finish unlike the brilliant mirror Proofs familiar to many modern collectors.
PCGS research records 1,194 VDB Proof cents delivered on August 2.
They were struck from a single die pair and are exceptionally rare today.
After VDB production was suspended, Proof production resumed without the initials.
The VDB Proof is one of the great specialist rarities of the Lincoln series.
The wheat reverse remained on the cent through 1958.
For half a century, Americans carried Brenner's basic design through two world wars, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the early Cold War.
The metallic composition changed temporarily during World War II, but the visual format endured.
The Wheat cent became one of the most widely collected coin types in American history.
World War II created the most dramatic composition change of the Wheat era.
Copper was strategically important for the war effort.
In 1943, cents were struck primarily from zinc-coated steel.
The bright gray coins looked radically different and were attracted to magnets.
A few 1943 cents were accidentally struck on leftover bronze planchets, creating some of the most famous error coins in American numismatics.
The 1944 Return to Bronze
The Mint returned to a copper-based alloy in 1944.
Wartime shell casings contributed material to cent production, though the simplified popular story that every post-1943 cent was made directly from melted battlefield shell cases overstates the process.
The important point is that the Lincoln cent's composition adapted to national needs while Brenner's portrait remained unchanged.
The coin became a tiny witness to wartime material policy.
For the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in 1959, the wheat reverse was replaced.
Frank Gasparro designed a new reverse showing the Lincoln Memorial.
Brenner's obverse remained.
The Memorial cent lasted through 2008.
Thus the portrait introduced August 2, 1909 survived another major redesign without surrendering its place on the obverse.
The Memorial reverse contains a tiny representation of Daniel Chester French's seated Lincoln statue inside the building.
That means Lincoln appears twice on the coin: Brenner's portrait on the obverse and the Memorial statue on the reverse.
It is a small detail easily overlooked in circulation.
Under magnification, however, it became one of the charming features of the long-running Memorial cent.
Exactly a century after the Lincoln cent debuted, the Mint redesigned its reverse four times during 2009.
The coins commemorated the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth and the centennial of the cent itself.
The four designs represented Lincoln's birth and early childhood in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois, and presidency in Washington, D.C.
Brenner's 1909 portrait remained on every one.
Beginning in 2010, the cent adopted a permanent Union Shield reverse.
The shield symbolizes Lincoln's preservation of the United States as a single nation.
Once again, the reverse changed while the obverse portrait survived.
The longevity is remarkable.
A design created during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency remains immediately recognizable more than a century later.
Rising copper prices eventually made the traditional bronze cent uneconomical.
In 1982, the Mint transitioned to copper-plated zinc.
The modern cent contains only a thin copper coating around a zinc core.
The weight dropped substantially.
Yet visually, the coin continued to present Brenner's Lincoln much as Americans had known him since 1909.
A Coin Nearly Everyone Has Collected
The Lincoln cent became a gateway to numismatics.
Its low face value made it accessible to children.
Long production created hundreds of dates, mintmarks, varieties, and errors to search for.
Wheat cents could still be found in circulation for decades after the reverse changed.
Millions of collectors began by looking through jars, bank rolls, or pocket change for missing Lincoln dates.
Even people with little numismatic knowledge may recognize terms such as “1909-S VDB,” “1943 steel penny,” or “1955 doubled die.”
Few other coin series have produced varieties so deeply embedded in popular collecting culture.
The reason begins with accessibility.
A cent was cheap enough to search in quantity.
The August 2, 1909 release unknowingly launched a century of treasure hunting at kitchen tables.
The wheat reverse lasted 50 years.
The Memorial reverse lasted another 50.
Four bicentennial reverses followed in 2009.
The Union Shield came next.
Through all of them, Brenner's Lincoln remained.
That continuity makes the obverse one of the most enduring images ever placed on United States money.
On August 2, 1909, Americans lined up for a one-cent coin.
They were drawn by Abraham Lincoln, the centennial of his birth, and the novelty of seeing a real president on ordinary federal coinage.
Within days, the designer's initials triggered controversy and a production change that created the legendary 1909-S VDB.
But the deeper importance of the release became visible only with time.
The Lincoln cent changed American coinage permanently.
Presidential portraits would later appear on the Washington quarter, Jefferson nickel, Roosevelt dime, Franklin half dollar, Kennedy half dollar, and other issues.
What had once been a major break with tradition became normal.
And the portrait that began that transformation is still recognizable to Americans more than a century later.
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