In honor of the death of the penny (see here), I thought we'd look at another penny from my coin collection. This one isn't exactly rare or hard to get, but at the same time it is a bit uncommon unless you specifically look for it. I'm talking about the steel penny, minted only in 1943. This guy:
It was minted only one year, in 1943. There are plenty of them out there and, except for mint copies, they have no real value so they aren't hard to get. But they aren't going to show up in change (or only very rarely will), so unless you are a collector, you probably will never come across them.
Due to the war, in 1943 copper was in short supply. It was considered a critical resource for producing ammunition and other military supplies like wiring and communications equipment. To conserve copper, the Treasury Department sought an alternative material for the penny, leading to the decision to use steel coated with a thin layer of zinc.
It was a low-carbon steel, so the zinc coating was to prevent rust. When they were new, it gave it a very nice silver-like appearance. This looked nice, but it led to problems, which I'll get into below.
If not for the war, this might have been the perfect time to also introduce a new design, but as it was, they decided to use the same design but just change the material. Oh well.
So yeah, that's how we arrived at the steel penny. But it only stuck around for a year. What happened?
Though the coin looked very nice when new, the zinc coating was too thin and very quickly wore off, exposing the steel which they quickly rusted.
In addition, vending machines didn't update for the new penny, which really frustrated the public. Two take aways from this one: 1) Vending machines refusing to update... about like them refusing to update for the dollar coin for the past 20 years (since the Sacagawea dollar, which if memory serves businesses promised to quickly update all vending machines for, and then immediately ignored it). Seems like nothing ever changes. 2) Penny vending machines?! Amazing to think that the lone penny used to command some degree of buying power!
Finally, it caused a lot of confusion with the similar sized dime, again leading to public anger.
So, say it ain't so, the mint moved to quickly put an end to this one-year experiment.
For the next year it was decided to try to use recycled copper, primarily taken from shell casings, but also other wartime scraps. These are known as "shell-case pennies". Or maybe "shell-case cents", I forget.
These basically look the same as other copper pennies, but they are a little darker. I also have some shell-case pennies around here somewhere. I'm slowly getting my coins organized. I'll do another post when I find them.
Some comparisons!
Next to a Lincoln and an Indian-head penny:
Next to a dime, which it was often confused for at the time:
And just for the heck of it, next to a silver eagle:
There is a rare 1943 bronze cent that was mistakenly struck with leftover copper plates. I'm not sure how many there are of these, but I know they go for big bucks if you find one. Otherwise, the steel penny is a common coin, though a pretty interesting one from a historic perspective.
| David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Mastodon. |
