Realcent.org

I recently went through the wheat pennies I accumulated a few years ago in order to put them in my Dansco album. I had a bag of relatively clean pennies and a bag of dirty ones. I only went through the clean ones so far. I'll look through the dirty ones for dates I need, but I won't count every date. So, here is a list of approximately half of the wheats I found in approximately 250,000 pennies:

1910-1
1911-1
1912-1
1913-1
1916-1
1916D-1
1917-1
1918-1
1918 S-1
1919-8
1919 D-3
1919 S-2
1920-6
1920 D-2
1925-2
1927-1
1928-1
1928 D-1
1929-1
1929 D-1
1930-3
1930 D-1
1931-1
1934-5
1934 D-1
1935-8
1936-8
1937-5
1937-D-2
1938-3
1939-7
1940-23
1940-D-4
1940 S-2
1941-26
1941 D-7
1941 S-2
1942-17
1942 D-5
1942 S-1
1944-45
1944 D-17
1944 S-4
1945-46
1945 D-9
1946-35
1946 D-19
1947-8
1947 D-9
1947 S-2
1948-7
1948 D-9
1948 S-2
1949-4
1949 D-8
1949 S-2
1950-15
1950 D-17
1950 S-4
1951-5
1951 D-38
1951 S-2
1952-6
1952 D-33
1952 S-1
1953-3
1953 D-34
1953 S-3
1954-1
1954 D-15
1955-12
1955 D 54
1956-8
1956 D-59
1957-6
1957 D-71
1958-13
1958 D-47

As you can see, assembling a complete set from circulation, even without key dates, is quite impossible, at least where I live. I thought I might at least complete the 40s and 50s, but I was unable to. I'm missing tons in the 09-39 range. The lowest mintage I got was a 1931; the oldest was a 1910. I do have a couple (I think 6) 1943s, but I don't know where they are at the moment...

Not a single 55-S from that many pennies. Amazing!

And even if you do have six 43 steel cents, it just goes to show you how heavily hoarded those babies were. I've always thought that it was amazing how much harder it is to find 43 steel cents (1.093 billion made) vs. war nickels (869 million made). The war nickels had lower mintage, are worth more, don't have the rust issues that the steel cents have, and yet they are MUCH easier to find. Go figure...

Recyclersteve wrote:Not a single 55-S from that many pennies. Amazing!

And even if you do have six 43 steel cents, it just goes to show you how heavily hoarded those babies were. I've always thought that it was amazing how much harder it is to find 43 steel cents (1.093 billion made) vs. war nickels (869 million made). The war nickels had lower mintage, are worth more, don't have the rust issues that the steel cents have, and yet they are MUCH easier to find. Go figure...

I think the main reason there is that steel cents are magnetic, and thus removed by coin-counters most of the time. Also I believe the government had a program to remove them from circulation and destroy them in the 1960s when rust was becoming an issue.

Sooo, how long did it take you to sort the 250k?

My penny hoard is only at 20k and climbing.. I still have a 5k bag to sort still. The last 5k bag was cleansed and only had 40-50's.

scyther wrote:

Recyclersteve wrote:Not a single 55-S from that many pennies. Amazing!

And even if you do have six 43 steel cents, it just goes to show you how heavily hoarded those babies were. I've always thought that it was amazing how much harder it is to find 43 steel cents (1.093 billion made) vs. war nickels (869 million made). The war nickels had lower mintage, are worth more, don't have the rust issues that the steel cents have, and yet they are MUCH easier to find. Go figure...

I think the main reason there is that steel cents are magnetic, and thus removed by coin-counters most of the time. Also I believe the government had a program to remove them from circulation and destroy them in the 1960s when rust was becoming an issue.

Yeah - I get them all the time from the counter magnets.

scyther wrote:As you can see, assembling a complete set from circulation, even without key dates, is quite impossible, at least where I live. I thought I might at least complete the 40s and 50s, but I was unable to. I'm missing tons in the 09-39 range. The lowest mintage I got was a 1931; the oldest was a 1910. I do have a couple (I think 6) 1943s, but I don't know where they are at the moment...

A few years ago when I first started hand sorting I thought finding collectable cents would be a nice bonus to stacking copper. Wrong. After sorting about 100k it was obvious that pre-40 cents are basically out of circulation. Of the few I did find, many were either damaged or practically worn smooth.

Then it dawned on me that those coins are 70-100+ years old, and generally all wheats have been getting taken out of circulation for over 50 years now.

Jefferson nickels are the way to go if you want to attempt to sort your way into a set. I'm trying... might take another 25 years at my current pace!

silverspaz wrote:Sooo, how long did it take you to sort the 250k?

My penny hoard is only at 20k and climbing.. I still have a 5k bag to sort still. The last 5k bag was cleansed and only had 40-50's.

I sorted pennies for about 15 months straight; done very little since then.

hammerrob wrote:A few years ago when I first started hand sorting I thought finding collectable cents would be a nice bonus to stacking copper. Wrong. After sorting about 100k it was obvious that pre-40 cents are basically out of circulation. Of the few I did find, many were either damaged or practically worn smooth.

Then it dawned on me that those coins are 70-100+ years old, and generally all wheats have been getting taken out of circulation for over 50 years now.

Jefferson nickels are the way to go if you want to attempt to sort your way into a set. I'm trying... might take another 25 years at my current pace!

Yeah they're usually quite smooth... I actually kind of like the look and feel of them, although the worst of them can be hard to read.

I agree Jeffersons are the best from-circulation set. I need 2 more (the 43-D and 44-S) and will probably never get them since I don't sort nearly as much as I used to.

I just went through the rest of my wheat pennies. I found the 13-D, 17-S, 26, 38-D, 39-D, 43, 43-D, 45-S, and 46-S, along with a replacement for my 17. Not bad.