VINTAGE Lincoln Head Cent Collection 1941-1962 Whitman Folder 50+ Wheat & Memorial Pennies

Someone started filling this little blue Whitman coin folder decades ago — and then, for reasons we'll never know, stopped.

This is an original Whitman Lincoln Head Cent Collection Number Two folder, starting in 1941, containing a substantial collection of Lincoln cents through 1962. The coins remain exactly where we found them, including Wheat cents, Lincoln Memorial cents, and the distinctive wartime steel cents of 1943.

THE COLLECTION

The folder includes coins dated from 1941 through 1962, with examples from the Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco mints. Please see the photographs for the exact dates, mintmarks and open spaces represented.

Among the highlights are:

• 1941, 1941-D and 1941-S
• 1942, 1942-D and 1942-S
• 1943 Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco steel cents
• 1944, 1944-D and 1944-S
• Numerous postwar Wheat cents
• 1959 and later Lincoln Memorial cents
• Multiple Denver and San Francisco issues throughout the collection

The coins are circulated and vary considerably in condition, color and surface appearance. Some show spotting, oxidation, discoloration and other evidence of age and handling. The 1943 cents show the characteristic appearance and aging associated with their zinc-coated steel composition.

The coins have not been professionally graded, and we make no representation regarding numerical or adjectival grades. They have not been cleaned or altered by us.

The vintage Whitman folder also shows age and use, which we think is very much part of its charm. The collection is being offered exactly as found rather than dismantled, cleaned, upgraded or completed.

A PENNY IN ITS TIME

This little collection tells quite a story about America.

When its first pennies were struck in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and the United States was about to enter World War II. By 1943, copper had become important to the war effort, and the familiar copper-colored penny temporarily became a zinc-coated steel coin — three examples of which remain in this collection.

Copper-colored cents returned in 1944, and the familiar Wheat Cent continued through the prosperous postwar years of the 1940s and 1950s. Then, in 1959, the Lincoln Memorial replaced the wheat ears on the reverse, marking the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

And through all of it, these were everyday money — carried in pockets, dropped into cash registers, saved in jars and, eventually, pressed into little blue coin folders like this one.

We don't know who originally assembled this collection or why they stopped. That's part of what makes an old collection like this appealing: it preserves not only the coins, but a little evidence of the person who once thought they were worth saving.

You will receive the exact vintage Whitman folder and coins shown in the photographs.

Shipping included in the US.