Which wheat pennies are valuable

The U. By the end of the s, they had become a hot coin collector item and remain so to this day. The difference between this penny and the closed 3 listed above is the way the serifed ends of the 3 come near the middle of the digit. As a rule, open 3 Indian cents are more common than the closed 3 variety. Damaged coins or those grading lower based on wear will be worth less than the coin values listed above.

For example, many of the doubled die entries on the list above such as the , , , and doubled die Lincoln cents are much scarcer in number than the Indian Head cent or D Lincoln cent, but are not as widely collected, thus the values of those somewhat more obscure coins are lower.

Remember, a substantial fraction of the coins that were once minted no longer survive today, as many have been lost, melted, or damaged beyond recognition. While , were struck, several population estimates suggest only 50, to , may still exist — a fairly large number indeed, but much lower than mintage numbers suggest.

Whether you collect Flying Eagle pennies , Indian Head pennies , or Lincoln pennies , you will find that the market for rare pennies is quite active. If you are investing money in rare pennies, buy coins that are in the best condition you can afford, and always focus on purchasing coins that display original color and are in nice shape overall.

In they would be added much smaller to the front of the coin near Lincolns shoulder. All Wheat Pennies are worth more than their face value of. Findong a circulated coin in MS is a long shot. You may get lucky and find your Grandma's stash, or maybe pick one up from a bank teller that just got dumped off during the holidays however. So keep your eyes out for a pretty one!

Mint engravers in Philadelphia manufactured new reverse coin dies and sent them to the San Francisco mint facility. Unfortunately, there was only enough time left in the year to mint 1,, coins.

Compared to the almost 73,, coins minted in Philadelphia this amount is relatively small. Therefore, this coin carries a premium over the Philadelphia minted coins because of its low mintage. Up until , mint employees used a small letter punch to add the mint mark to the working die by hand. Although very precise in their work, the exact position of the mint Mark tended to vary. Additionally, sometimes employees punched the wrong letter or oriented the letter in the wrong place.

Since coin die production was a very manual labor-intensive process, dies that had mintmark mistakes on them were not scrapped but fixed so that a proper mintmark would appear. Regrettably, the errors were not always entirely removed, and some remnants of the mistake remained underneath the new mintmark. This is numismatically referred to as a " re-punched mintmark " or RPM.

In this example, you can see the remnants of an "S" that was punched horizontally into the die instead of vertically. Look for the remnants of the previous mintmark near the upper loop of the S. This will be more difficult to see if the coin is well circulated and extremely worn. With a mintage of 1,, coins, the D does not have the lowest mintage in the Lincoln cent series the S VDB and S have lower mintages.

But experts estimate that this issue has one of the lowest survival rates. Keep in mind, in one of the reasons that Lincoln was chosen to be the subject of a new small cent was that it was the th anniversary of his birth. A lot of publicity surrounded the launch of this new penny, and many people saved them.

By , enthusiasm for saving new Lincoln cents decreased and many of these coins ended up in circulation. This is another coin that is frequently counterfeited and altered. Doubled die coins are not double struck and should not be confused with mechanical doubling.

Due to a production error in the manufacturing of the working coin die, the mint craftsman made two impressions that were slightly offset from each other.

This is evident because both doubled images are raised. If it was a double-struck coin, one image would be raised in the other one would be flattened. Since The doubling is extremely narrow, the use of a magnifying glass is suggested. This coin is an extremely popular variety, and demand for it is continuously growing.

The No "D" Lincoln penny is another example of a manufacturing process at the U. Mint facility in Denver causing a unique error. If it were not for a fire at the U. Mint facility in Philadelphia, coin collectors would have never noticed this error. Because of the fire, no Lincoln cents were produced in Philadelphia no mint mark in Researchers think that the Denver mint facility produced approximately , coins without the requisite "D" mint mark.