Rare 1944-S Lincoln Steel Penny to Sell at GreatCollections
By CoinWeek …..
One of the rarest and most valuable Lincoln Pennies will cross the auction block on Sunday, January 5, as GreatCollections offers the finest of only two known 1944-S Lincoln Steel Cents. This rare off-metal coin was accidentally struck on leftover zinc-plated steel planchets used in 1943 in an effort to preserve copper, then a strategic war metal. This major cent error, the rarest of its type, was once owned by Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team owner Bob R. Simpson, who was the first collector to ever own the complete P-D-S Set of 1943 and 1944 Lincoln Penny off-metal errors.
The Simpson 1944-S Lincoln Cent is graded MS66 by PCGS. Of the two known examples, it is the only one that survives in Mint State. When the Simpson Lincoln Cent collection was auctioned in 2021, this coin sold for $408,000.
With more than 50 bids so far and a pre-sale current bid of more than $300,000, CoinWeek expects it to sell for more than $375,000.
Last year, CoinWeek compiled its list of Ten Amazing Lincoln Cents Worth a Lot of Money, where we ranked the off-metal 1944 Steel Cents #7. As research into World War II-era coins improves, so does our understanding of the Mint’s struggle to keep the coin presses running as the country marshaled the manpower and machinery necessary to fight Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.
The Philadelphia Mint was the epicenter of these experiments, while the Denver and San Francisco branch mints focused most of their effort on producing coins to fill the needs of their service regions. Just as the 1943-D (unique) and the 1943-S (five known) are rarer than the 1943 Copper plain cent, so too are the 1944-D (seven known) and the 1944-S (two known).
Most 1944 Lincoln Steel Cents were produced at the Philadelphia Mint, which also struck coins for foreign countries. This means that some off-metal coins struck at Philadelphia were from leftover 1943 blanks, while others were struck on blanks intended for foreign use, such as the Netherlands 25 cent piece.
As the Simpson 1944-S Steel Penny is the finest of only two known and is an iconic coin in the most popularly collected U.S. coin series, the importance of this offering cannot be overstated.
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To search through GreatCollection’s archive of over 600,000 certified coins and notes the company has sold, please visit the GreatCollections Auction Archives.
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