penny

Last Sunday, January 2nd, a Canadian penny was sold by Heritage Auctions for a record-breaking $402,500.  This was, of course, no ordinary Canadian penny, although at first glance few would know it.   Simply being a 1936 penny, bearing the profile of King George V, isn’t particularly remarkable, but one small feature is:  the dot.   The dot indicates that this particular penny, and its corresponding dime and quarter, were not quite what they appeared to be.

1936 opened with a tragedy for the United Kingdom: King George V passed away on January 20th, and his son, Edward, became King Edward VIII.   Edward had been a womanizer and caused scandal by being in the company of a married woman — and, in the end, Edward chose to give up the throne to marry his companion, abdicating the throne in December 1936.   Aside from the political and social effects of Edward VIII’s quick term as the “Rex et Indiae Imperator”, the Mints of the kingdom were sent reeling.    The Mint in England did manage to produce several coins with Edward’s profile, but Canada’s Mint was still producing coins with King George V on them, partly in honor of his memory, and partly because those were the only coining dies that were available.    During 1936, preparations had been made to mint Canadian coins with Edward’s profile, but his abdication threw a wrench into the plans.

1936 came to an end and the Canadian Mint hadn’t any new dies ready.   In order to continue to produce coins, the Mint decided they needed to use their existing dies, but they determined to give the coin an identifying mark to indicate these were, in fact, coins minted in 1937.    A small hole was drilled in the die, which would leave a small raised mark on the coin.   The “dot” was placed towards the bottom of the reverse, and the front remained the identical George V coins from previous years.   Several thousand pennies, dimes, and quarters were produced with the dot before the new dies were ready, but only the quarters had made it out to the street.   The remaining pennies, dimes, and quarters still at the Mint were destroyed, except for a few samples that ended up in the hands of collectors.

Currently, less than five each of the pennies and dimes are known to exist, and are believed to be the only ones that survived.    One of the three known “dot dimes” was sold as the same auction as the record-setting dot cent, and realized $184,000.  The dot quarters that had been distributed have mostly survived, although the majority are in circulated condition.   The quarters also naturally seem more worn than other 1936 quarters, because the dies were quite worn before they were put back into use as the dot-coin dies, so the detail and relief in the quarters is of a slightly poorer quality than a regular quarter of the same period.   Those quarters are the average collector’s primary chance to one one of these rare, historic coins, although there’s likely to be another opportunity to get a dot penny or dot dime sometime in the future.

Every productive graduate of the United States of America’s public school system knows what today is:   Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  This particular February 12th is a special one, because it also commemorates the 200th anniversary of his birth.  Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, and grew up in Illinois — in both cases, living very rural pioneer’s life, in what was the westernmost reaches of the United States at the time.  So the story goes, despite  his humble start, Lincoln was educated, eloquent, and measured in his leadership, making him one of the most endearing and respected presidents in history.   A few summers ago, my family visited a Civil War reenactment, and a tall, lanky gentleman was sporting the Lincoln costume of a top hat and a beard, posting for pictures and handing out pennies to children.   Our youngest — who had already claimed Lincoln as his favorite president ever — was absolutely amazed that he could get a picture with Lincoln, but then take home a tiny copper disk with Lincoln’s image on it…a monetary gift from the spirit of Lincoln himself.

When Lincoln was young, of course, pennies didn’t have his picture on them; that would have made things more difficult for the young lad.  The copper penny was actually the very first coin authorized by the government to be produced by the U.S. Mint.   As we’ve seen before, the U.S. had a difficult time fixing its currency through the first half of the 19th century, so numerous varied designs appeared during Lincoln’s youth.  The Mint stuck mostly with classically-Greek women’s profiles, but the coin was much larger than today.   These “large cents” were either 27mm or 29mm, or almost as large as the current half-dollar coin.  Small cents came into use shortly before Lincoln was elected president.   In 1857, the Mint began producing “flying eagle” pennies, at the current penny size.   Minting problems, however, were aggravated by design problems with the flying eagle, so in 1859 one of the most famous coins of the 19th century first appeared: the Indian Head penny.

The Indian Head penny was the standard cent for fifty years, from just before Lincoln’s election, to the 100th anniversary of his birth.   In 1909, a new penny was introduced into circulation as part of President Teddy Roosevelt’s ambitious currency redesign.  New York engraver Victor D Brenner, a Lithuanian Russian immigrant, was selected based on his previous work for Roosevelt.  The design was a hit, and Brenner’s design has remained in use for a hundred years, an amazing amount of time for a single coin’s obverse.

One consistent design feature of the penny, even going back to the large-cent period, was a wreath on the reverse.    Each wreath was a little different, varying forms and foliage, but consistently round, with the coin’s value in the center.   The Lincoln Cent had a wreath of wheat stalks on the back, earning them the nickname “wheatstraw pennies”.    In 1959, however, the obverse design was changed — commemorating the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, Mint engraver Frank Gasparro produced a design depicting the Lincoln Memorial.   The Memorial had been built about 37 years before, and was a excellent pair to match Jefferson’s Monticello on the reverse of the 20-year-old nickel design.

As of today, however, the Memorial has been exchanged for a new design, to celebrate Lincoln’s 200th.   Four designs, in fact, are being issued, each depicting a different period in Lincoln’s life: one depicting a log cabin of his youth; a young Lincoln reading a book representing his life in Indiana, a Lincoln participating in the Indiana Legislature; and the construction of the Capitol representing his presidency.   Three of the designs will start appearing in the next several months, but today the Log Cabin Penny is available from the Mint.  For a hundred years, the penny has been a symbol of one of our greatest presidents, and this new series intends to further express our affinity for his life and works, with these commemorative designs.

Superficially, it’s easy to tell a collection of Ming vases or classic oil paintings. They look old and they look valuable, and the collector knows it. However, anyone who’s played The Price Is Right when watching Antiques Roadshow knows value isn’t always on the surface. The appraiser may go into great detail about an artist, where he was born, what he did during his life, what he was known for, and the drops the valuation bomb: the original work of art is worth $2,000. The next guy, bringing in an unremarkable wooden trunk from the 1700s, design and construction common for the times, walks away with a cool $25,000 appraisal. It’s the collectors who know what something is worth. Those prices are based on what a reasonable buyer will pay, and those buyers are collectors.

Take Scott Travers. Last month, he went shopping in Times Square and bought a hot dog, bottled water, and a pretzel. None of the transactions warranted big bills, so he spent the change in his pocket. Little did the retailers know, Travers wasn’t spending just any pocket change: three of the pennies he spent, mixed with the rest of his change, had a combined collector’s value of over $1,500. Of course, wise numismatic enthusiasts don’t carry their collection around in their pockets. Travers deliberately put the coins in circulation to draw attention to his hobby. He hoped that somewhere down the line, someone who got change at a restaurant would notice the rarity of the coin that had passed unnoticed through the pockets of others. His experiment banks on the unseen value of collectibles: at purely face value, a penny is a penny: value, 1/100^th of a dollar. However, in the eyes of a collector, a much different valuation is constructed. The date says 1904, the artist’s intials “VDB” are clearly visible on the reverse, and that 1/100^th of a dollar increases millions-fold.

There is, however, a third value, that all collectors can evaluate but find it difficult to describe to their relatives, friends, and critics. It’s the valuation level in between retail pricing and the number collector’s guides print. With a unique collection, it might be the only valuation ever assigned to the collection. What I’m talking about is what a collection is worth to its owner.

This valuation is most important to the kinds of collections profiled in the Entertainment section of the newspaper on Tuesdays. They’ve got a yard full of push lawnmowers, or they built a special building to hold their collection of vacuum cleaners. They’ve got drawers full of flattened milk cartons, or archives of airplane vomit bags. And, if you ask any collector (strange or no), the percieved value is more important than any other. Far too often, the items with the best stories on Antiques Roadshow are the items you can tell will remain in the family: being less valuable than a wooden box means nothing to a family who loves their rare painting. Scott Travers, however, figured his rare coins had a far greater value if they surprised some sharp-eyed stranger someday. For the rest of us, our collection is the reason we spend reckless amounts of money simply to own whatever it is. We know that the money we spend doesn’t come close to the value of adding it to the collection.