Pennies
Rare pennies: which Lincoln cents are actually scarce?
Choose a range of years: the tool ranks the Lincoln cents struck in the smallest numbers, by year and mint, from the Bureau of the Mint tables.
Lowest-mintage Lincoln cents
Lowest mintage 1909 to 1958
1931-S: 866,000
| 1914-D | 1,193,000 |
| 1924-D | 2,520,000 |
| 1909-S | 2,618,000 |
Number struck, from the Bureau of the Mint tables; San Francisco proof-heavy years 1965 to 1980 are left out. A low mintage is a lead, not a price: survival and condition decide what a collector pays.
Rarity in Lincoln cents starts with a number the Mint published: how many pieces each mint struck in a year. The Bureau of the Mint’s 1981 tables put the lowest figures from 1909 to 1980 at 1931-S (866,000), 1914-D (1,193,000), 1924-D (2,520,000), 1909-S (2,618,000), 1911-S (4,026,000), all from the wheat period and all from branch mints. Every Lincoln cent struck after 1958 runs to hundreds of millions or billions, so a modern date is never rare by number alone. The second road to rarity is accident: the Mint’s anatomy of a coin page confirms that a few 1943 cents were struck in copper by mistake, and collectors seek doubled dies and other errors that the Mint does not count. This page ranks the numbers and lists what to check for each known variety; it does not give dealer prices, because no free official source publishes them and condition changes everything.
Known varieties: what to check
Look for
Not attracted by a magnet and about 3.1 g; a normal 1943 cent is steel, sticks to a magnet and weighs about 2.7 g.
| All 1943 cent (penny) coins struck | 684,628,670 |
| Mintage band of that issue | Very high mintage (over 200 million) |
The Mint does not count varieties apart: the figure is the whole issue they hide in. Only an authentication service can confirm one.
Mintages, metals and prices read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
The lowest numbers, ranked
The table below takes every Lincoln cent from 1909 to 1980 in the Bureau of the Mint tables and keeps the ten lowest figures. San Francisco figures from 1965 onward are left out because they include proof coins made for collector sets, which never circulated and would crowd the list with coins that are easy to buy from sets.
| Coin | Struck | Band |
|---|---|---|
| 1931-S | 866,000 | Very low mintage |
| 1914-D | 1,193,000 | Low mintage |
| 1924-D | 2,520,000 | Low mintage |
| 1909-S | 2,618,000 | Low mintage |
| 1911-S | 4,026,000 | Low mintage |
| 1914-S | 4,137,000 | Low mintage |
| 1912-S | 4,431,000 | Low mintage |
| 1931-D | 4,480,000 | Low mintage |
| 1926-S | 4,550,000 | Low mintage |
| 1915-S | 4,833,000 | Low mintage |
The tool at the top of this page redoes the ranking for any range of years you choose. Try 1959 to 1980: the lowest figures are still in the hundreds of millions, which is the simplest way to see why Memorial cents are not rare by date.
Two features of the list are worth noticing. Denver and San Francisco dominate, because Philadelphia always struck far more. And several years appear twice, because both branch mints had small runs at the same time.
Varieties the Mint did not count
Some of the cents collectors want most were not separate issues at all, but coins that left the press different from their twins. The Mint counts them inside the issue they belong to. The small tool below lists the best-known ones with the detail to check and the size of the issue each hides in.
- 1943 in copper. The Mint’s anatomy of a coin page confirms that a few were struck by accident. A magnet does not pick one up and it weighs about 3.11 grams. See the 1943 penny page.
- Doubled dies of 1955 and 1972. The die itself carried a doubled image, so every coin it struck shows the letters twice, with rounded double outlines. The 1972 doubled die page explains what to look at.
- 1909-S VDB. An S under the date and the initials VDB at the bottom of the reverse. The S already makes it one of the shortest runs in the series.
- 1922 without a D. Only Denver struck cents that year, so a cent with no mark comes from a worn or filled Denver die.
Known varieties: what to check
Look for
Not attracted by a magnet and about 3.1 g; a normal 1943 cent is steel, sticks to a magnet and weighs about 2.7 g.
| All 1943 cent (penny) coins struck | 684,628,670 |
| Mintage band of that issue | Very high mintage (over 200 million) |
The Mint does not count varieties apart: the figure is the whole issue they hide in. Only an authentication service can confirm one.
For each of these, imitations exist: plated steel cents, altered dates, added or removed mint marks. A magnifier, a magnet and a scale answer most questions at home; an authentication service answers the rest.
From a number to a decision
A sensible order of work is to read the date and mint mark, check the band in the coin value checker, then look at condition. A coin in a very low or low band, without holes, cleaning or corrosion, is worth showing to an expert. A coin in a high or very high band is worth its metal unless it shows one of the varieties above. The grading guide explains how wear is judged, and the error coins guide covers off-center strikes, wrong blanks and other press accidents.
The end of circulating penny production does not change this ranking. The Mint’s announcement of the last circulating cent estimates 300 billion pennies still in circulation; the scarce ones were scarce a century ago and remain so, and the common ones remain common.