Pennies
Lincoln Memorial and Shield cents: what are they worth?
Type the year and pick the mint: the tool gives the number struck where the Mint published it and the metal value of that cent.
Lincoln cent after 1959: year and mint
Metal value of one 1970 coin
4.4¢
| Struck at this mint | 1,898,315,000 |
| Mintage band | Very high mintage (over 200 million) |
| Metal | Bronze cent (95% copper) |
| Mint mark on the coin | none |
At copper $6.61 per lb (last price read).
Lincoln cents dated 1959 and later are the coins most people find in change, and almost all of them are worth one cent as money. The Mint’s penny FAQs date the Lincoln Memorial reverse from 1959 to 2008, followed by four Bicentennial designs in 2009 and the Union Shield from 2010. Up to 1981 these cents are 95% copper and weigh 3.11 grams, about 4.4¢ of metal at the copper price read on October 27, 2026; from 1983 they are copper-plated zinc of 2.50 grams, about 1.1¢, and 1982 has both. Philadelphia and Denver struck billions a year: 4,235,098,000 at Denver in 1974 alone. The San Francisco figures of these years include proof coins made for collector sets. What lifts a Memorial cent above face value is an error or a doubled die, not its date, so this page shows the metal, the number struck and what to check.
1982 penny: copper or zinc by weight
Your 1982 cent is
95% copper
| Expected weight | 3.11 g |
| Metal value | 4.4¢ |
| Cut-off used | 2.80 g |
Both kinds were struck in 1982, so the date alone does not tell them apart.
Mintages, metals and prices read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
Four reverses, one portrait
Lincoln’s portrait on the front has not changed since 1909. The back has. Frank Gasparro designed the Lincoln Memorial reverse for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth and it ran from 1959 to 2008; in 2009 four Bicentennial designs followed; from 2010 the Union Shield, which the Mint’s penny FAQs describe as a symbol of Lincoln’s preservation of the country as one nation. The tool at the top of this page covers all of them, with figures for 1959 to 1980 from the Bureau of the Mint’s 1981 tables and for 2010 to 2012 and 2016 to 2023 from the Mint’s production reports.
| Year | Philadelphia | Denver | Metal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | 610,864,291 | 1,279,760,000 | bronze |
| 1964 | 2,455,895,762 | 3,799,071,500 | bronze |
| 1969 | 1,136,910,000 | 4,002,832,200 | bronze |
| 1974 | 4,232,140,523 | 4,235,098,000 | bronze |
| 1979 | 5,266,790,000 | 4,139,357,254 | bronze |
| 2012 | 3,132,000,000 | 2,883,200,000 | zinc |
| 2020 | 3,560,800,000 | 4,035,600,000 | zinc |
Even the smallest of these is in the hundreds of millions. A Memorial cent is never scarce because of its date and mint alone, which is a useful thing to know before spending time on a jar of them.
Copper years and zinc years
The real dividing line in this series is metal. The Mint’s report for fiscal 1982 records the change from bronze of 95% copper to copper-plated zinc of 97.5% zinc, with the weight going from 3.11 to 2.50 grams and the diameter unchanged. Both were struck during 1982, so a coin of that year can be either. A scale reading to a hundredth of a gram settles it, and the small tool below turns a weight into an answer.
The difference in metal value is real: a copper Memorial cent holds about 4.4¢ of metal against 1.1¢ for a zinc one, at prices read on October 27, 2026. It does not give anyone a way to profit, because the 31 CFR Part 82 rules ban melting, treating or exporting cents, apart from small exceptions such as pressed souvenir pennies and jewelry where the metal value is clearly not the point.
Mint marks on Memorial cents
The mint mark sits under the date. In these years you will see D for Denver and S for San Francisco; Philadelphia added a P only on cents dated 2017. The Mint’s page on mint marks explains the gap of 1965 to 1967, when the Coinage Act of 1965 removed mint marks to discourage collecting while the Mint worked to meet the country’s coinage needs, before they returned in 1968. A cent dated 1966 with a D is therefore not a variety but an altered coin.
San Francisco is a special case. It stopped striking cents after 1955 and appears again in the tables from 1968, with figures that include proof coins sold in collector sets: 261,311,507 in 1968 and 2,909,369 in 1975. Proof coins have mirror-like fields and frosted portraits and were not meant for change. The tool shows these figures with a warning, and the rare pennies ranking leaves them out.
What makes one worth a second look
Not the date. Look for doubling of the letters and numbers that shows as a clear second outline, such as the 1972 doubled die; for a 1982 cent of the wrong weight for its look; for coins struck off center or on the wrong blank. A cent still bright orange from the Mint in a sealed roll is pleasant but common. Everything else in a jar of Memorial cents is spending money, and the page on saving pennies works out what a jar holds now that the Mint has stopped making new ones.
The end of circulating production, on November 12, 2025, does not turn Memorial cents into collectibles overnight. The Mint estimates 300 billion pennies in circulation, far more than commerce needs. A coin made in the billions stays common for a very long time.