Is a wheat penny rare

Answer 1

Well there are rare as in hard to find and those that are stoppers, ones that require substantial patience and deep pockets to acquire. I will assume that you mean those that are hardest to find but still available to the average collector for a premium.

First off are what are called the key date cents, these are generally regarded to be the following:

1909-S

1909-S VDB

1914-D

1931-S

All of these coins carry moderate to large price tags depending upon grade and are very unlikely to be found searching through bags of old coins having been pulled from circulation for the better part of a century.

Next are the semi-key dates. This is less agreed upon than the key dates. With some people calling anything with a low mintage a semi-key date. I will use a more traditional listing that has fewer coins. They are as follows:

1910-S

1911-S

1912-S

1913-S

1914-S

1915-S

1922-D

1924-D

In addition the following cents are hard to find but haven't traditionally been considered semi-key but still may be refereed as such by some sellers especially on Ebay.

1909-VDB

1922-D weak D

1923-S

1926-S

1931-D

Then there are those cents which are not needed to complete a regular set of Lincoln Cents as they are mint errors. These are also some of the most expensive coins in the entire series running thousands of dollars or more for a nice example. They are:

1917 Double Die Obverse

1922-D No D plain strong reverse

1955 Double Die Obverse

In terms of pure rarity these are far rarer than even the key date Lincoln Cents but are not collected as coins representing a date/mintmark but rather as rare errors.

Those are just a few of the many different collectible mint errors in the series, a complete list would be perhaps a hundred different coins.

Answer 2

That's a pretty broad question. The key dates are:

1909-S

1909-S with VDB initials

1914-D

and the famous errors:

1922 with a missing mint mark

1943 struck in copper

1944 struck in steel

1955 doubled die

There's more information at the links below.

Answer 3

Error coins tend to have the highest values such as Doubled-Die errors (1955-1972 etc.) and wrong planchet errors. The highest known selling price of a "Wheat Penny" is 1.8 Milliondollars for the only known 1943-D copper Lincoln cent.

Answer 4

probaly a 1909 s vdb penny or a copper 1943 penny

Answer 5

Probably 1909-s vdb, 1909-s, 1914-d, 1931-s because there were very few pennies minted of these.

Answer 6

A 1909-S V.D.B only half a million of these were made

Answer 7

No if the penny was found in circulation they are not rare.

Answer 8

I don't know the "hardest to find", but even when I was a kid, the 1955 "S" (San Francisco mint) penny was considered very rare. It would only be that much more so now.