The rarest pennies by mintage
Mintage is the number of coins a mint struck. For Lincoln cents made for circulation, the lowest is the 1909-S VDB: 484,000, struck at San Francisco with the initials of the designer, Victor David Brenner, on the back. Next come the 1931-S (866,000), the 1914-D (1,193,000), the 1909-S without the initials (1,825,000) and the 1924-D (2,520,000).
The Mint made about 560 billion Lincoln cents for circulation from 1909 to 2025, in 284 combinations of date, mint mark and design. Only 17 of them had fewer than 10 million made, and only two fewer than a million. The 20 rarest are all dated 1909 to 1933. In 1922 only Denver struck cents, 7,160,000 of them, the fewest of any year.
Later pennies were made by the billion: more than a billion in every year from 1960 to 2025. About 95% of all Lincoln cents are dated 1960 or later. The rarest regular cent since 1960 is the 2009 Presidency design from Philadelphia: 129,600,000.
The rarest pennies are mistakes
The pennies that sell for the most were never meant to exist. In 1943 cents were made of zinc-coated steel, because copper was needed for the war. A few bronze blanks left in the presses were struck anyway. One published census counts 25 bronze 1943 cents: 17 from Philadelphia, 7 from San Francisco and 1 from Denver; the U.S. Mint put the number near 40 in 1999. The Denver coin sold for $840,000 in January 2021, and a San Francisco one for $456,000 in March 2026.
The reverse happened in 1944, when leftover steel blanks were struck as cents: 25 to 30 from Philadelphia are known, and only two from San Francisco, the finer of which sold for $408,000 in August 2021.
Doubled dies are the other famous errors. Three 1958 cents are known with LIBERTY and IN GOD WE TRUST plainly doubled; the finest sold for $1,136,250 in January 2023. Between 30 and 50 doubled-die 1969-S cents are known, which the Secret Service at first seized as counterfeits; the finest brought $601,875 the same month.
Is a 1943 steel penny rare?
No. The Mint struck 1,093,838,670 steel cents in 1943: 684,628,670 at Philadelphia, 217,660,000 at Denver and 191,550,000 at San Francisco. They look unusual because they are silver-gray, not because few were made.
The Mint’s own test tells a steel cent from a bronze one: a steel cent sticks to a magnet. The Mint also warns that the 1943 bronze cent has been faked by plating steel cents with copper and by altering the dates of 1945, 1948 and 1949 cents, so a 1943 cent that does not stick needs an expert’s opinion.
What is a penny worth?
A penny is worth one cent at the bank, and the Mint says it remains legal tender now that production has ended. Its metal is a separate matter. A cent dated before 1982, other than the 1943 steel cent, is 95% copper: 2.95 grams of it, worth about 4.2 cents at the August 2026 average copper price. A zinc cent made since 1982 holds about 1 cent of metal. Melting cents for their metal is against federal rules.
Anything beyond that is what a collector will pay, and that depends on the date, the mint mark and the coin’s condition. This page gives how rare each date is and what the rarest have sold for; it is not a price guide.
The last cents for circulation were struck on November 12, 2025, when the Mint said each one cost 3.69 cents to make and about 300 billion were in circulation; its 2025 annual report put the cost at 3.02 cents for the fiscal year that ended in September. The final ones were sold in December 2025 in 232 three-coin sets that brought $16.76 million; the last set sold for $800,000.
How rare is your penny?
Enter the year and mint mark in the penny lookup to see how many were made, what the coin is made of and what to check for. The mint mark is the small letter under the date: D for Denver, S for San Francisco. Most Philadelphia cents have none.
Where the numbers come from
Mintages for 1909 to 1965 are from the Bureau of the Mint’s own record of coins manufactured from 1792 to 1965, which we read year by year; its Denver and San Francisco columns add up exactly to the totals the Mint printed. Mintages for 1999 to 2025 are from the Mint’s annual production reports, archived from usmint.gov, and its year-end figures as CoinNews reported them.
We show a figure only where one of those stands behind it, because the table most sites copy is wrong in places. It has 1,435,000,000 for the 1944 Philadelphia cent where the Mint printed 1,435,400,000, 266,268,000 for the 1945-D where the Mint printed 226,268,000, and 2,407,200,000 for the 2010-D where the Mint reported 2,047,200,000. For 1966 to 1998 we have not yet checked a Mint document for each date, so the lookup says only that the coin was made by the billion.
Counts of known error coins are collectors’ censuses, not Mint figures. The methodology has the full rules.
Good questions
What is the rarest penny?
Among pennies made for circulation, the 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent has the lowest mintage: 484,000, about 1 in a million of all Lincoln cents. Rarer still are errors: one 1943-D bronze cent, two 1944-S steel cents and three 1958 doubled-die cents are known.
What is the rarest wheat penny?
By mintage, the 1909-S VDB (484,000 made), then the 1931-S (866,000) and the 1914-D (1,193,000). The rarest wheat pennies of all are errors: the single 1943-D bronze cent, the two 1944-S steel cents and the three 1958 doubled dies.
How much is a 1943 steel penny worth?
A 1943 steel penny is not rare: the Mint struck 1,093,838,670 of them, and the steel in one is worth a small fraction of a cent. The valuable 1943 pennies are the roughly 25 struck in bronze by mistake; the only Denver one sold for $840,000 in 2021. A steel cent sticks to a magnet and a bronze one does not.
How much is a wheat penny worth?
Every wheat penny (1909–1958) except the 1943 steel cent is 95% copper and holds about 4.2 cents of copper at August 2026 prices. The Mint made 25.8 billion of them, so most dates are common. Collectors pay the most for the low-mintage dates, led by the 1909-S VDB, and for errors such as the 1943 bronze cents.
How much does it cost to make a penny?
3.02 cents in the Mint’s 2025 fiscal year, according to its annual report, down from 3.69 cents in 2024, the figure it gave when it struck the last penny for circulation on November 12, 2025. A decade earlier it was 1.42 cents. The zinc and copper in a penny were worth about 1 cent in August 2026.
How much does a penny weigh?
2.5 grams for pennies made since 1982, which are copper-plated zinc. Earlier pennies, 95% copper, weigh 3.11 grams, and 1943 steel pennies about 2.7 grams. Both metals were used in 1982, so a scale tells a 1982 copper penny from a zinc one.