The key date of the Wheat Cent series is not only among the most popular of U.S. coins but also one of the most counterfeited ones, too, due to its value, rarity and ease of alteration. This is why Proxiblog recommends that collectors authenticate their raw coins with a top third-party grader. There are just too many fake coins out there.
But how to tell?
This article provides several die markers so that you can verify whether a coin is real before you purchase it. But before introducing them, we need to revisit coin history.
Controversial Initials
Fake 1909-S VDB cents have sullied the hobby ever since the U.S. Mint called attention to it by repositioning the designer’s initials from the reverse to the obverse in a much less conspicuous place.
Secretary of the Treasury Franklin MacVeagh disliked the prominence of Victor David Brenner’s initials and stopped production in August of that year, removing initials entirely on the remaining 1909 and 1909-S cents. That is why you only find the initials on some 1909 and 1909-S examples. In fact, those initials did not appear again until 1918 when the VDB appears below Lincoln’s shoulders. That’s how angry MacVeagh was. But he wasn’t thinking about counterfeits at the time even though his actions inadvertently made altered dates easy.
Scammers realized they stood to make big profits merely by adding:
- An “S” to a 1909 VDB cent.
- VDB to a 1909-S cent.
- An “S” and “V.D.B” to a 1909 cent.
Rationale to do this concerned the scant 484,000 mintage of the key date 1909-S VDB and the high mintage of the Philadelphia coins (72,702,618 regular 1909 cents and 27,995,000 1909 VDB cents). The 1909-S NO VDB has a small mintage of 1,825,000 and is considered a semi-key date. But even these have been used in altered coins.
Values are synced with mintages. An EF45 1909 regular retails for about $7; 1909 VDB, $20; 1909-S, $200; and 1909-S VDB, $1,450.
In addition to the tens of thousands of altered dates over the years, current hobbyists have to contend with Chinese counterfeits and replicas sold as authentic on eBay and other venues.
This is why it is essential to know attributes of the dies that struck the rarity.
1909-S VDB Markers
As NGC reported in 2016 that just one “S” mintmark punch was used on all San Francisco Lincoln cent issues from 1909 to 1916. This is the first step in identifying a fake.
Real “S” mintmarks have a nodule here:
Now compare mintmarks with a genuine, added mintmark and cast replica mintmark:
As you can see, the real mintmark has a Roman font with serif. The added mintmark doesn’t. The replica has a serif but no nodule.
There are also four mintmark positions with respect to the date, with each edging a tad lower from the first 9 and 0 of 1909.
- Mintmark 1 has the highest “S” with the top close to the first 9 of the date.
- Mintmark 2 has the top of the “S” equal distance between the first 9 and 0 of the date.
- Mintmark 3 also has the top of the “S” closer to the 0 of the date than the first 9.
- Mintmark 4 has the lowest position with top of the “S” nearly flush under the 0 of the date.
Another die marker concerns the initials themselves. The “B” in VDB has a slanted crossbar; fakes usually forget this.
The last die marker concerns the extra thick stem of the letter “N” in “United.” A fake coin often forgets this minor detail.
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