Popularly Collected Lincoln Cent Varieties
COIN TALK is my favorite coin site, and I check it at least once daily. From it, I’ve discovered that most new collectors who post there have questions about a Lincoln cent they’ve found. Usually their question is about whether or not the coin has some sort of error and what it is worth. Another frequent question is, “Should I send it to be graded?” By that, they really want to know if it’s worth enough to get certified.
Actually, I don’t find it strange that new collectors would search Lincoln cents, as that’s the series I concentrated on when I was a junior collector in the mid-1950s. In fact, my serious collecting began when my father brought home a roll or two of cents every day. These were rolls that he picked up at the grocery store where he stopped for such “necessities” as cigarettes, razor blades, a loaf of bread, or $1 worth of gas.
When I looked through the rolls, I sought pre-1940 dates with mintmarks, semikeys or keys of the series, or just early dates in great shape. What I did not look for were error varieties, such as doubled dies, repunched mintmarks, and the like.
In fact, the only Lincoln cent variety listed in the 1958 edition of (aka the “Red Book”) was the 1922 No D cent. It was worth $2 in Good, $4 in Fine, and $10 in Uncirculated condition. A normal 1922-D was
