What are facts about a 1943 US penny?

Answer 1

The 1943 US cent (or "penny") is one of the most iconic US Coins ever made, due both to its unusual composition and the reason for its existence.

At that time US cents were made of a bronze alloy containing 95% copper. When the US entered World War II enormous amounts of copper were needed for making ammunition. With each cent containing 2.95 grams of pure copper, that denomination alone was consuming roughly 3 million kilograms of the metal every year. Finding a new composition for the lowly penny was a critical priority.

The Mint experimented with many different substitutes ranging from aluminum to plastic; at one point even ceramic and heavy-duty paper (!) were tried without success. They finally decided that the simplest and least-disruptive alternative was to make the coins out of scrap steel that wasn't suitable for making war equipment like ships and weapons. To prevent rust, they were coated with a thin layer of zinc.

The coins were very attractive when first released. Because steel is harder than copper, even the low-quality scrap used for the new coins produced very sharp, well-defined images. The zinc coating gave them a shiny silver-gray color that enhanced the sharp strike. However, once they'd been in circulation for a short while problems started to surface. Among others:

• The silver color caused many people to confuse them with dimes.
• Unlike other US coins the new "steelies" were attracted to a magnet, causing problems with some coin-processing equipment.
• The shiny zinc coating quickly oxidized to an unpleasant dull gray that resembled lead.
• If the coating was damaged, moisture would cause the underlying steel to start rusting.

The experiment lasted only a year. Military needs for new copper supplies had dropped, allowing the Mint to return the cent to its pre-war bronze composition starting in 1944. Most of the copper was in the form of used ammunition jackets, so the new cents quickly became known as "shell-case pennies".

1943 cents continued to circulate for another 15 to 20 years. Their unusual appearance led many people to keep any that showed up in change, so huge numbers survived despite a Mint program to recover the coins and melt them down. Today an average-condition 1943 cent that has not been cleaned or replated can still be bought for 50 cents or so. They're not valuable but are strong reminders of a time when even the little cent had to make a sacrifice for the war effort.

1943 Copper and 1944 Steel Cents

Any time a coin's composition changes there's a chance that a blank made of one metal will accidentally be struck with the date or design intended for the different alloy. That's exactly what happened in both 1943 and 1944, producing two of the most famous "transitional errors" in the history of US coinage.

A small number, perhaps 24 to 40, bronze blanks left over from 1942 production somehow ended up being struck along with the steel blanks used in 1943. Coin blanks are kept in large bins before being fed into presses that strike the front and back designs. Most experts assume that the old bronze blanks had somehow gotten stuck in the bottom of a bin in 1942 and were jostled loose when the steel blanks were dumped in. As of 2015, retail price estimates for these coins are:

• Philadelphia (no mint mark): $61,000 to $223,000 depending on condition
• San Francisco ("S" mint mark): $150,000 to $300,000
• Denver ("D", only one coin known): $1.75 million

A similar error happened in 1944 when some leftover steel blanks got mixed in with the new shell-case bronze blanks at the Philadelphia Mint. These coins are about as rare as their 1943 cousins but never received quite the same amount of publicity. As a result prices for moderately-worn specimens are about 1/10 that of a comparable 1943 bronze cent, although in top condition retail prices are almost the same.

Counterfeiters have taken advantage of those huge values as well as widespread myths about the coins' existence. A lot of 1943 cents have been copper-plated, 1945 and 1948 cents have had their final digit altered to a "3", and fakes have even been struck from new dies. In general they're very easy to spot, though.