How Much Is My Penny Worth?

By Susan Headley, About.com Guide

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• pennies
• cents
• lincoln cents
• price guides
• wheat pennies

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Question: How Much Is My Penny Worth?

These links will take you straight to the value guides. If you need additional information, see below.

• Wheat Penny Values
• Indian Head Penny Values
• Flying Eagle Penny Values – See Section Below

 

Answer: To find out how much your U.S. penny is worth, we first need to determine its type. The U.S. has made two major types of pennies, the Large Cent and the Small Cent. The Large Cents are dated 1857 and earlier, and are much bigger and heavier than our current penny type, the Small Cent. If you have Large Cents in your collection that you need information or values for, I recommend that you find an honest coin dealer to help you evaluate them, as Large Cents have many different varieties for most dates, and shouldn’t be priced using an online price guide if you want maximum money for them.

Determine Your Penny Type

If your penny is the Small Cent type, it will be about the same size as the ones we use today although it might be a tiny bit heavier. To find your penny type, you can look it up here:

• U.S. Coin Identification Chart

What is My Flying Eagle Cent Worth?

If your small-sized penny is dated 1857 or 1858, it is a Flying Eagle Cent. A Flying Eagle Cent in pretty worn-out condition is worth about $15 to $25 if you sold it to a coin dealer. (Note: All of my coin prices are realistic amounts that a dealer will pay you. They’re not retail or “catalog” values like you find virtually everywhere else. Most people looking for coin prices want to know how much they can sell their coins for today.)

If your Flying Eagle Cent is dated 1856, you need to take it to a dealer to get an appraisal. This penny is very rare, with a mintage of only 2,000 specimens, and forgeries and alterations of this date are far more common than the genuine 1856. The 1856 Flying Eagle Cent is considered to be a pattern coin (rather than a circulation issue) by many experts.

What is My Indian Head Penny Worth?

Indian Head pennies are dated from 1859 through 1909, and have a depiction of Lady Liberty wearing an Indian-style feathered headdress, hence the misnomer “Indian Head” Penny. In general, all Indian Head Pennies are worth at least $1 each, even in very worn condition, as long as they’re not badly damaged. For a full chart of Indian Head Penny prices, see:

• Indian Head Penny Price Guide

What is My Wheat Penny Worth?

Wheat Pennies are dated from 1909 to 1958, and have a portrait of Lincoln on one side, and a wreath-like design of wheat heads on the other. Sometimes called “Lincoln Cents” (without mentioning the Memorial as described below,) they are made of almost pure copper (95%) except for one year, the 1943 penny, which is made of zinc-plated steel. All Wheat Pennies are worth at least 3 times face value, but of course many are worth substantially more, especially the key date Wheat Pennies.

• Wheat Penny Price Guide

What is My Lincoln Memorial Penny Worth?

Lincoln Memorial Pennies are dated 1959 to current, and have a portrait of Lincoln on one side with the Lincoln Memorial building on the other. They were made of 95% copper until 1982. During 1982 the composition was changed to 97.5% zinc, with a thin copper plating, so that you have pennies dated 1982 made of both metal types. From 1983 until today, all U.S. pennies are made of mostly zinc. Most Lincoln Memorial Pennies are only worth face value unless they have their original copper luster from the Mint.

• Lincoln Memorial Penny Prices

In 2009, the U.S. Mint will issue a special commemorative set of 4 pennies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Cent design. At this time, Lincoln Cents are expected to enjoy a surge in popularity, which will hopefully mean higher values for these incredibly popular pennies. More Coins Q&A

Famous Pennies

A New 1943-S Copper Penny Is DIscoveredThe Finest Known Lincoln Wheat CentThe Rare 1877 Indian Cent in MS-66 Red

Lincoln Cents

Should We Dump the Penny?The Fascinating Story Behind the Lincoln CentList of Major Lincoln Memorial Die Varieties

The 1943 Penny

What Is my 1943 Penny Worth?How to Tell if Your 1943 Copper Penny Is Genuine1943 Chrome-Plated Pennies

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Sales of the 2010 bullion silver American Eagle passed the 10-million mark this week. To put it in perspective, last year saw 28,766,500 sold – and it is only April.

The Boy Scout commemorative silver dollar has not yet sold out. That is good news if you still want to buy one. The rate of sales stayed almost identical to last week, so it is likely that a sellout might have occurred by the time you read this. The Mint sold 22,261 this week and has 37,347 to go before it hits the ceiling of 350,000. So far 211,333 proofs and 101,320 uncirculated Boy Scout dollars have been sold.

Collectors snapped up another 31,953 two-roll sets of the 2010 Union Shield cent. That brings the running tally to 77,436. This should easily surpass the 100,000 mark, but where between that point and 300,000 will it run out of gas as the final two issues of last year have done? But, sales of those last two 2009 cent roll sets still creep forward.

Click here for total U.S. Mint mintage figures.

J&T Coins LLC with be at booth 502 at the Central States Numismatic Society coin show in Milwaukee, WI April 29th-May 1st, 2010. The show is located at the Midwest Express Center in downtown Milwaukee. Stop by and see us.

$100 Bill Gets Added Security   By Numismatic News April 26, 2010 The wait for a new $100 Federal Reserve Note just got longer.At a ceremony where the new design was unveiled by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Treasurer of the U.S. Rosie Rios and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on April 21, it was announced that the new designs would be placed in circulation Feb. 11, 2011.The Treasury will use the time to get the word out to paper money users around the world as to what the new note looks like and to reassure everyone that the old notes won’t be recalled. Collectors have been waiting for the new $100 note since the $50 was redesigned in 2004. The Treasury has spent the time incorporating more security features into the new note to combat ever more sophisticated counterfeiters. Collectors will immediately see that the facsimile signatures of the Treasury secretary and the U.S. Treasurer have been stacked on the left side of the note’s face while the Series 2009 date has migrated to the right side of the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. The back features a new view of Independence Hall as seen from the rear. The oval border that once surrounded the old view of Independence Hall has been removed from the new design as well as from the portrait of Franklin on the face. One of two new security devices is a blue 3-D security ribbon that contains images of bells and 100s that move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The bell in the inkwell on the face of the note is the second new security feature. The bell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it seem to appear and disappear within the copper inkwell. Three security features from the previous design have been retained: the portrait watermark of Franklin, the security thread and the color-shifting numeral 100, the BEP explained. Also on the face of the new $100 are phrases from the Declaration of Independence and the quill the Founding Fathers used to sign it. Both are located to the right of the portrait. Visit the website at www.newmoney.gov for more information.

Did YN Programs Have Impact?
April 19, 2010

Coin collectors often wonder what the future holds for the hobby. Speculation about it makes interesting reading.

One aspect of the future of numismatics is that it is largely determined by demographics.

Current collectors are counted by the number of them born between 60 and 50 years ago.

Why?

Because the prime decade of coin collecting for most hobbyists is their 50s. It has been that way for 100 years.

So the health of the hobby is determined by the number of 50-year-olds who decide to get in there and spend time and money on their favorite hobby.

Subtract the number of collectors who reach 60 this year from the number who turn 50 and the resulting number will tell you whether we will grow or not. If the number is positive, growth is likely.

True, there are collectors who are 49 and 61, respectively, but they are not part of the key demographic group.

In the next 10 years we will begin to see whether all the Young Numismatist programs that became mainstream in the 1970s will have any impact at all on the numbers of collectors in their prime.

About half of all collectors started before they were 20 and we will see if YN programs in their youth makes them return to the hobby in any greater numbers. Most collectors who started as kids put the hobby aside for a while as graduation, jobs and families became priorities. They then return in middle age as time and finances permit. Perhaps more will report that they never left the hobby, or returned sooner.

About 40 percent of collectors begin after age 40.

That leaves the great demographics wasteland of ages 20-40 where only 10 percent had their beginnings in numismatics.

The next 10 years should be a good one for the hobby overall. The question in my mind is what happens to YN programs if we see no evidence in that period that YN programs had any impact on the overall collecting life pattern of those who will be in their 50s during the coming decade and who would count among their number those very first YNs.

Will Gold Shoot to New Records?

By David L. Ganz, Numismatic News April 20, 2010

Gold charged forward, hitting $1,161 a troy ounce on April 12, suggesting perhaps the beginning of an assault on the $1,200 an ounce mark achieved last December.

The Dow Jones Industrial average was 10,452 on Dec. 1 when gold hit $1,214.80 on Kitco’s close; today the Dow is above 11,000. What about gold?

Each time that gold ticks upward, the numismatic consequences are enormous. That’s because double eagles are such a significant component of the rare coin market, and each contains almost a full ounce of gold. The U.S. $20 gold piece, which was produced in circulating quantities from 1850-1932, contains .9675 troy ounces of gold.

At $1,150 an ounce, the current base camp before assault on the golden peak, an uncirculated double eagle has a starting point, before numismatic value, of about $1,112 in gold. Some market analysis say that this makes MS-60 and MS-61 double eagles a great purchase opportunity.

Gold’s movement over the past 12 months has also seen its effect on gold bullion coins. The Engelhard gold quote at $1,161 was $898 a year ago. The Krugerrand and Canadian Maple Leaf have gone from $940 to $1,209. Coming up next is the American Eagle, moving in the same year period from $949 to $1,214. The U.S. Eagle gain is 27.9 percent. Slightly higher at 28.6 percent are the Krugerrand and Maple Leaf.

Meanwhile, silver is at $18.47 (up from $12.74 a year ago); platinum was $1,243 and is now $1,728. The silver gain is over 44 percent, platinum a bit less.

By Geena Paul
LONDON (Commodity Online): Even as the world is watching Iran with suspicion over its nuclear ambitions, Tehran is harbouring plans to tackle the US pressure through gold.

Otherwise, how will you explain the gold hunt Iran has launched after the Gulf war.

To stop an effort by the West to seize Iranian assets in Europe, the Iranian leadership decided to begin a massive, secret repatriation of its international currency reserves.

Therefore, the Central Bank of Iran started buying gold so that it can stall any economic threat by countries like US and England.

And, nobody knows how much gold Iran has already amassed. That too at a time when the world is still reeling under recession impacts and several central banks are hunting for gold to convert their foreign reserves into yellow metal.

So, Iran purchased gold secretly like China does it now and shipped it to their vaults. That was Iran’s intelligent move to shift its currency reserves to gold.

Earlier, Iran’s leadership wanted to purchase 700 tonnes of gold. However, their secret effort to convert Iran’s foreign currency holdings into gold appears to have stopped when word leaked.

The gold is now being held in the vaults of the Bank Markazi in Tehran. The asset repatriation plan was set into motion just weeks after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The decision was made during a strategic planning session of top regime leaders in Tehran, who were examining Iran’s options in the nuclear face-off with the West.

In addition to giving the orders to convert foreign currency holdings to gold and to repatriate them from Switzerland, the leaders also gave orders to Iran’s central bankers to move cash accounts from Europe into Arab and Russian banks, which they felt would be more immune to Western pressure.

Ahmadinejad this week visited Zimbabwe and Uganda, with whom he will discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.

Ahmadinejad’s visit to Uganda gains significance as world powers have stepped up pressure for a new round of UN sanctions against Iran for pursuing its nuclear programme.

The Gulf War wreaked devastation of unimaginable proportions on Iran’s infrastructure so much that even economic experts had predicted that it would be impossible to revive the economy in the foreseeable future.

But, Iran’s resilience to win back its lost glory has seen results in the recent past with countries like India even supporting the Iranian cause.

The economy of Iran is the sixteenth largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP). It is a transition economy with a large public sector and an estimated 40% of the economy centrally planned.

Exports are dominated by oil and gas which constituted 50% of government revenue in 2006. A unique feature of Iran’s economy is the large size of the religious foundations whose combined budgets make up half that of the central government.

High oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass $97 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Yet this increased revenue has not eased economic hardships, which include double-digit unemployment and inflation.

According to the Central Bank of Iran, annual inflation declined to 11.5% as of February 2010. The economy has seen only moderate growth.

At this juncture, Iran’s policy of buying gold may make the country more self-reliant.

By Rutam Vora, Commodity Online
At a time, when gold prices reeled under pressure for a sustained period after hitting its all-time high in December 2009, the perception towards the yellow metal seems to have reversed with investors hinting at weakening of gold prices in near future and strengthening of other investment avenues.

Gold, when started rising during last few months of 2009, increased hopes of further upward rally in the prices. But the current global economic scenario, where equity markets started showing signs of strong and steady recovery with emergence of alternative investment instruments like crude oil and other precious metals, the healthy returns in gold seemed vanishing, so the interest of people from the gold investments.

In an online opinion poll conducted by Commodity Online, majority of the respondents have hinted at a possible fall in gold prices in near future with better opportunity for earning knocking the doors.

In an online poll of a sample size of 21,600 respondents selected from across the globe, 93% or 20,100 of the total sample size had opined that there would be a fall in gold prices due to a recent upbeat mood in the global equity markets, while only 1400 respondents contradicted the stand, while 0.46% did not comment on either side. This showed that most of the respondents believed that there would be a fall in gold prices in near future due to recovery in global equity markets.

However, with regard to the other metals being an investment destination, most of the respondents maintained a view that they (base metals) can potentially become an alternative investment instruments. As many as 64.35% of respondents considered base metals as a potential investment instrument but of them, 53% still chose gold as a preferred investment instrument compare to base metals, while 46.76% preferred base metals to gold.

The global economy is recovering with rapid pace and the risk appetite of the investors prompting them to undertake higher risk involved in investment instruments other than gold would inevitably result in a reduced gold demand thereby pulling down gold prices. However, 52% of the respondents did not agree to the argument that increased risk appetite will bring down gold prices.

Similarly, of the total respondents as many as 53.1% believed that US dollar would replace gold from its status of ‘safe haven’. Looking at the recovery of US economy from the nightmarish recession which had started from the US and hit the world economy in 2008, dollar was found gathering steam once again. However, 46.8% of the respondents contradicted the view and maintained their skepticism towards dollar and put gold to their preferred investment mode.

However, when asked if gold would start booming once again with US dollar rally coming to end soon, the respondents were, surprisingly, evenly divided into two parts with 50% of them supporting the motion and 50% opposing it.

It can be, thus, derived that the current upheavals in currency markets and rapid recovery in equity markets have left investors dazzled as to choose gold or other investment instruments for sustained returns on investments. However, the poll clearly suggests that gold has maintained its unique characteristic of store-of-value but somewhere it has failed to yield expected returns in the short run.

The recent recovery in the equity markets has put a diversion to the investors’ preference towards gold as a preferred investment instrument; hence it can be derived from the poll analysis that gold has its value for long-term investments and not specifically for the short-term gains. The yellow metal, when hit the all-time high of USD 1227 per ounce in December 2009, had fuelled investor sentiments in short term, but the uptrend lost its pace when alternative investment avenues, like dollar, metals and crude started getting rosy once again.

Bullion Quarterly Outlook Q2, 2010

By Commodityonline

The multi-faceted yellow metal gold had a hard time during the wake of the worst recession since the Second World War as an untimely rise in US dollar eclipsed the safety haven appeal of the metal. Gold was also caught up in the imbroglio where panic selling engulfed the market.

However, the metal benefitted from the subsequent dip in the economical cycle, which pummeled the US currency, driving investors towards the safety of gold. The metal, since then, went on to explore new heights with investment and safety buying piling up, lending the metal with wings to rise.

Gold prices, during February 2010, hit its lowest level since the month of November 2009 as technical selling that emerged following a stronger US dollar and Macro Economic concerns that threatened the European nations and its currency put pressure on the market.

Emergence of significant physical demand at lows has helped the metal keep most of its gains from the Bull Run that commenced during the beginning of the 21st century. Investment demand of the metal has also been supporting prices.

Physical demand from the major importers like India and Turkey has been encouraging. According to the Bombay Bullion Association imports of India during the month of March 2010 has jumped towards 23-28 tonnes as compared to 4.8 tonnes during the same time last year.

The US GDP climbed out of negative territory and jobs market also bounced back, ensuring the recovery in the region to be underway. The depreciating US dollar discouraged imports and emboldened producers to export more, resulting in it narrowing the trade balance and supporting the US currency in its recovery. In addition, falls in the European currency also gave the American green back the impetus to rise towards further highs in the first quarter of 2010.

However, building uncertainties in the region have given rise to safe haven buying in the yellow metal. This paradigm shift was first observed in the Euro denominated gold, which held on to most of its earlier gains and trended towards the all time high, while gold denominated in dollar fell almost $200 from its all time high of $1226.

The correlation of gold with other major commodities being traded have witnessed considerable decline during the first quarter of 2010. The movements in crude oil prices were mostly in accordance with that of the US dollar, resulting in a decline in correlation with that of gold.

The rising US dollar continues to remain a threat for the yellow metal’s uptrend while safe haven buying is expected to give support and contain any decline.

Silver, being a precious metal, usually moves in tandem with gold and had slid at the turn of the century as rising US dollar weighed on the sentiments. The investment interest also showed a declining trend during the time.

However, the dips in silver prices were always perceived as buying opportunities as safe haven buying that emerged in the yellow metal trickled into silver prices as well. The metal also assumes the role of an industrial metal, thereby enjoying the support from base metals, primarily copper.

Improving industrial demand with global economic recovery underway is expected to support prices of silver in the second quarter of 2010. The part precious metal silver will also imbibe buying interest from the yellow metal, providing silver with additional support.

National Coin Week 2010 National Coin Week “Beautiful Places: Landmarks and Mintmarks”

 Print This Article Comment On This ArticleBy American Numismatic Association on Monday, March 29, 2010
Filed Under: American Numismatic Association, Clubs & Associations

Every year during the third full week of April, the ANA and its members celebrate National Coin Week with exhibits, educational resources, presentations and other activities at civic centers, libraries and schools to let the world know about the joys of collecting and studying coins and other forms of money.

“Beautiful Places: Landmarks and Mintmarks” is the theme of 2010 National Coin Week, April 18-24. The theme celebrates the many historic and scenic places that have inspired designs on coins and paper money throughout U.S. and world history.

This year, the ANA is going on a virtual road trip — and we want you to come along! The cross-country venture will double as a treasure hunt. Beginning Presidents Day, February 15, a clue to a numismatic object will be provided once a week via e-mail. Click Here to see all the clues.

The final clue will be revealed the Monday of National Coin Week, and all road-trippers who complete the hunt and register their findings will enter a drawing for a 1/2 ounce gold coin (revealed during the trip) and other great prizes.

To reserve a spot for the trip and have information and weekly clues sent to you via e-mail, send a message to ncw@money.org with “ROAD TRIP” in the subject line

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