I recently read that the US mint is planning a Lincoln penny commemorative. Is a penny commemorative an insult? It is the lowest denomination/it is mostly thrown away or in a drawer/....on the other hand there are alot made and we all get them in our change. Does anyone other than a coin collector take the time to look at and ponder ponder over what change they get (other than to make sure it is the right change)? I personally think it is kind of an honor....

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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

But Lincoln is already featured on the US penny - so maybe it makes sense to commemorate him on that coin.

I don't think it's an insult. Commemoratives are collector items - the denomination really has no meaning.

I look at my change. I admit I'm building a state quarter collection and I sometimes find other interesting coins.

I examine mine pretty closely simply because most people don't. I have found some interesting things...

I recently found a 2006 Canadian dime with a nice rim defect on it....so yeah that makes it interesting....

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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

I think this is the source of whatever it is you heard. I'm not sure how twisted or reworded it might be by the time it gets across the sea.
No; it's more of a spotlight of an existing appearence.
There do tend to be a whole lot around. So much so that some people people hate them.*
The denomination itself does not change the importance. It is usually the circulation that defines the importance.
Thats why Washington is on the $1.

* Apparently most people want to keep them (75%) but the other 25% really, really, really seem to hate them. I wonder how many of the 75% actually think both. In other words, a necessary evil.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

So they want a series of pennies commorating the four great events of Lincoln's life: born on a mountaintop in Tennesee, his great riverboat race with Mike Fink, service in Congress, and defending the Alamo.

Or was that Davy Crockett?

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

All I know is that one of 'em was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands, and the other was killed in a bar when he was only three.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I'm glad to find out that the overwhelming majority of people I've queried all agree that Davy Crockett was, indeed, killed in a bar at age three. What he was doing there, I don't know.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

That was back before the "21 legal drinking age" law.

I thought Daniel Boone was Davy Crockett, not Abraham Lincoln.

Or was that Jim Bowie?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

I vaguely recall that he was trying to fill the cummerbund gap,
or something like that. After H.L. Mencken told him to go west.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

No, Jim Bowie was a bold, adventurin' man.

Daniel Boone was also a man, but he was a big man.

H.L. Mencken told Horace Greely to go West. Note that 'Gone West' is a euphemism for dying.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Or with the accent it was appropriatly "go waist".

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

"Go Waist, Hon."



H. Davy Crockett (full name Humphrey Davy Crockett) was born on a mountaintop in Tenessee, although his mother couldn't make the climb and had to stay down at the bottom. After being killed in a bar at a young age, he moved to Ohio and entered a great boat race with that fink, Howard Keel and his buddy, Ebsen.

He was elected to Congress and finally learned to spell. He established the lobbying system, showing how to put the fix in legislation. In 1814 he lead the British into Washington, briefly capturing it, and was arrested for mutilating a national historic treasure. He later claimed he was not responsible by reason of intoxication, seeing as how in his duites he drank too much Everclear.

After his release he rented a car at Alamo and went west to Texas, where he met up with Sam Hill, Sam Antonio, Dallas "The Cowboy" Worth, and Jock Mahoney. He participated in the Battle of the Avis, where, as he indicated in his autobiography, he was killed a second time by Mexican troops under the command of Santa Claus.

Davy Crockett is best remembered today as Fess Parker.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

actually, I thought he was cilled in a bar.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

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Lincoln was not only a noble man, he was rumored to have walked ten miles to return a small amount of change, possibly just a penney, thus earning him the nickname, "Honest Abe."

Whether or not that's how he actually received that title, I do not know.

So is this commemorative penny actually a special commemorative, not intended for circulation, or just an alternative design for regular circulation like the state quarters and recent nickels with the alternate Jefferson portrait and Lewis & Clark reverses? I would suspect the latter, in which case you use Lincoln because he's already on the penny. Er, cent that is, since there is technically no such thing as a penny in the USA coinage.

Making a special cent seems a bit odd though, somehow. They cost more than $.01 to make, last I heard, and they have to make a lot because people toss them in the drawer and forget about them. Giving folks another reason to collect instead of circulating them can only make it worse.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

I believe that it will be a similar program to the recent Jefferson nickle commem series. Ultimately they are redesigning the coins. After all the penny has (at least one side) been the same since 1909 and the wheat side has been replaced with the Lincoln Memorial. The Jefferson nickle 1938. Wish they's come up with new designs for Canadian coins- maybe a Tim Horton's quarter....(with removalable center)...

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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway ...

The "makes its own change" joke's been done, Banquo.

The 'prize' in my ad hoc collection is an 1888 (Queen Victoria) canadian penny (about twice the radius of a US penny, and maybe 20% thinner), that's seen so much use, it's almost worn flat. But the date is still readable.

Its younger siblings, a 1916 and 1918 (same design only with King George on the reverse), are in far better condition.

I have a dozen or so Canadian pennies minted during WWII.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

You suspect correctly. There will be 4 releases in 2009, and we will end up with a 5th design after that. (Here's the USMint page describing it)

That issue exists no matte what the design is. Since the mint needs to make new dies as they wear out anyway, there's absolutely no cost involved in just carving a different design.

Based on the last 3 years of production, and 30 years life for a coin, I would say there are about 30 billion of them out there.
What I don't understand is why the big variations in production. Less than 1 billion each in 2006, 2007, but already 1.5b in the first 4 months of 2008?
If each American saves one each of the 4, then we are taking 1.2 billion out of circulation.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Which according to your statistics is a whole years production, at least for most years. Some folks will want to save one of each with every mint mark, but of course many more will not save them at all, except in the usual chuck-it-in-the-drawer fashion. So I expect you're right and this won't make any big difference on demand.

Thanks anyhow for doing the legwork to track this down. I was feeling lazy yesterday!

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Glad to help. It was one of those things that I knew had to be out there, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't flying off the handle.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Ah, but taking the money out of circulation lowers inflation, so that's a good thing, right?

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.