1943 Bronze Cent
The reaon that the 1943 Bronze Cent was rare is the coin shouldn’t be struck. It is one of the most famous error coins in US history. It’s well known that among three mints, the Philadelphia mint produced the biggest number of error coins.
The 1943 Bronze Cent was designed by Victor David Brenner. On the obverse, it features a bust of President Abraham Lincoln. On the reverse, it features ONE CENT in the center surrounded by ears of wheat. It weighs 3.11 grams, 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc.
The 9134 Bronze Cent was not supposed to be struck and it was a mistake that U.S. Mint made during the making of the coins. The idea of 1943 Broze cents were released was to save the copper for use in World War II. Hundreds of Millions of such coins were struck. However some coins were struck in error, and they were struck in the old style, bronze blanks.
It’s a quality control issue. However, the Mint’s policy was that it didn’t make mistakes even though the Chief Engraver had one of those error 1943 bronze cent until such policy was loosed in 1960.
Not too many coins were caught in circulation. The first one was discovered in 1947 by Sam Lutes, who was a school boy and he found it in his school cafeteria. It was later on sold in 1958 for $40,000. It was quite a lot of money back then. A few years after that, between 1960 and 1992, eight 1943 Bronze Cents were found and sod between $8,000 and $23,000. Even though the Mint didn’t immediately acknowledge its mistake, many knew such coins exist. So some of the coin deals post big rewards for that. Of course the chance to find a true one is very little. To identify an authentical 1943 Bronze Cent, you can use a magnet. If the coin is attracted to the magnet, it is copper plated and it is not the authentical 1943 Bronze Cent. If it is not attracted to a magnet, then it is possible and you might bring it to a local coin dealer. So far totally twenty 1943 Bronze Cents were discovered, tweleve of them were produced from Philadelphia, one from Denver Mint, and the other seven from San Francisco Mint.