Bucket of Coins

Once again, another month has past and the US Mint’s release of their production for the month have been posted. The numbers for August seem to be on cue with what we have seen with the prior releases of the Birthplace Log Cabin and Formative Years Log Splitter cents. I am going to continue to stick by my guns and keep my assumption that July’s production numbers were reflective of the minting of the Professional Life penny.  That being said the Denver mint produced 216.0 million in July and August production numbers reflect another 141.6 million produced for a total Professional Life Lincoln cent mintage of 357.6 thus far.  However, the Philadelphia mint production appears to have finally topped the 400+ million LP3 cents being produced thus far by taking the July number of 284.9 million and adding August’s 145.2 million for a 2009 Lincoln Cent high mintage of 430.1 million through September 1. The total mintage across all series for 2009 Lincoln cents are 976.0 million for Denver mint and 957.2 million in Philadelphia for a total mintage of all 2009 pennies of 1933.2 Million or 1.9332 Billion.

It looks like out of all the series the LP1 Birthplace Log Cabins are going be the short run of the four series as it appears they continue to increase each production run. Keep in mind these numbers do not count mint/proof sets.

Well yesterday the US Mint put this year’s 2009 Clad Proof Sets on sale for $29.95. Yes I ordered my sets at noon like most die hard collectors and got confirmation they are in stock!  The website seemed to die for a few hours shortly after I ordered my sets

Ya I ordered 50 sets...hopefully the quality is good!

The biggest addition to these sets besides the District/Territory quarters is it contains all four of the versions  of the 2009 Lincoln penny struck in bronze from the S mint!  This is the same composition that the Lincoln cent began being minted in 1909.  The silver Proof sets will contain the same pennies as the clad Proof set. The uncirculated sets, to be released later this summer, will contain the same four 2009 Lincoln cents with the same composition but they will be struck with a Satin Finish featuring the P and D mints… eight different pennies in all!

So this year there will be eight circulation strike Copper over Zinc 2009 Lincoln pennies, eight Satin Finish Bronze 2009 Lincoln pennies, and four Proof Bronze 2009 Lincoln pennies for a grand total of twenty different varieties of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth and the Centennial of the Lincoln cent!  Not to mention the medals and silver dollars the Mint has produced this year in honor of our 16th President.  This is almost becoming a collector’s nightmare.  Not only are these 2009 Lincoln pennies aren’t being circulated but it seems the only way someone can obtain them for their collection is through the secondary market or directly from the Mint.  Needless to say it is probably going to be a banner year for profit for the US Mint.

I sure hope the Mint doesn’t follow suit of the baseball card world and start putting “random inserted limited edition coins” in mint rolls!  If you can afford it, have fun buying these unique sets…if not wait a few years and these regular issue 2009 Lincoln’s may make it into circulation, but don’t hold your breath too long!

I have been able to track down and confirm that the release of the “Formative years in Indiana” 2009 Lincoln cent is going to occur on May 14th at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Lincoln City, Indiana. This penny is the one with young Abe with an axe reading a book portrayed on it. It had been speculated that the event may occur in Indianapolis at the Capital, this squelches those rumors as the Indianapolis news was the first source to confirm this locale.

As far as coin collectors go, with all the frenzy of the first release let’s hope the US Mint plans ahead and brings enough for everyone there to get a box or two if they want. Let’s hope after the US Mint has now realized that they can get $13.90 for a P and D roll, that they don’t offer those exclusively and do away with the “penny exchange”. I am sure that however many they bring they will sell them out and hopefully the people working the penny sales don’t get too greedy and buy them all up themselves or cut a deal with some dealers to get the vast majority of what has been brought for the release. People’s greed sometimes amazes me, so I am not going to sugar coat that speculation. At the prices the first release brought I would be willing to take a second mortgage and buy all they have! Ha!

For those of you wanting to travel there for the event, let me warn you…Lincoln City, IN is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I would expect dealers to be on hand to get their mitts on this second 2009 Lincoln release. But it should be interesting to see what kind of turn out will be there. I plan on being there since it’s about 1.5 hours from where I live, but I can see the vultures starting to circle now.

Just like clockwork, at 12 PM EST today, the $8.95 + $4.95 shipping two roll sets went on sale at the US Mint website. Orders are limited to 5 per household. Those of us who attempted to order more five were surprised to find out there was a limit. It’s been rumored that maybe these rolls contain the 95% copper cents we have been hearing about due to the lofty price of these 50 cent rolls. It is a good opportunity for coin collectors to get their hands on BU rolls from both Mints.

It is interesting to see that they are back ordered a whole another day already…sounds like a money maker for the Mint already!

It appears more 2009 pennies were minted during the month of February raising the total for the Philadelphia mint to 194.4 million and the Denver Mint to 342.4 million. It is not clear whether or not this was the minting of the new 2009 Lincoln Formative years penny or more of the 2009 Lincoln birthplace log cabin penny. Either way the production numbers are super low as stated in a previous post, the US Mint is usually in the BILLIONS of cents minted by this time of the year. Hopefully a breakout of the four types of 2009 Lincoln’s will be available in the future rather than a running total.

It still appears that the Philadelphia mint is producing far fewer than Denver at this point so I am trying to gather as may Phillies as I can!

Also it appears the Mint is going to be selling rolls 2009 Lincoln Birthplace Log Cabin from both mints for $8.95 + $4.95 for shipping beginning March 13th.

After doing some research, it appears that the US Mint has only minted a combined total of two hundred forty seven (247) million of the new Lincoln birthplace pennies between both mints in Denver and Philly! This number is usually in the BILLIONS by mid-February.

With the release the #2 cent of the series due out in Springfield in less than three months, is this going to be the total mintage of these first 2009 cents? Time will tell! If you can find some, I would definitely hold on to them and continue to look for these for sale any place you can! Looks like they are going to delayed according to this headline from Coin World “Nationwide release of 2009 cents on delay?: Federal Reserve, coin terminals are glutted with coins”.

Well, as many have come to realize 2009 Lincoln Cent mania has hit! A roll sold for $100 yesterday…makes you wish you had a few boxes of them doesn’t it?

I think that it is being driven by the fact that as of this moment, the only 2009 pennies out there are the ones the US Mint brought to the small town in LaRue County, KY called Hodgenville. Truly the town’s claim to fame is being the birthplace of our 16th President Abraham Lincoln. The engraving of the log cabin he was born in now on the reverse of the new penny. You can actually visit and see this cabin as it is preserved by being placed in at building that looks similar in it’s design to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

It has reported there were a minimum purchase of 2 rolls and a maximum purchase of 10 rolls per person per time through the line. At the end of all the “2 through 10 roll buyers”, there were 80 sealed boxes of the first Lincoln cent in the series of four, left for the remaining twenty or so dealers and public that had the want and funds to purchase them at the rate of one box per time through the line until sold out. It was observed that even though 80 boxes were announced left for sale for those in line, less than 60 were sold. Conversations revealed that there was some actual bidding in the hallways for boxes starting at $50 a box to $100 a box being transferred in the parking lot of the LaRue County High School. So you’d have to assume that the staff working there heard this and potentially wanted to triple or quadruple their money and bought the boxes themselves. Can’t blame them!

Ironically, there has been sales of full boxes for $700 on a popular auction site at the time of this writing. A friend of mine had called the US Mint and inquired about when the 2009 Lincoln cents would be available for purchase. He was told the 2009 cents were not available and they did not know when they would be, even though they debuted in Kentucky on Lincoln’s Bicentennial Birthday launch sponsored by the US Mint and the Commonwealth of Kentucky a day before!

Speculation is that they may be delayed for release into circulation due to the abundance of pennies in public, private, and bank’s possession. This spurred my curiosity, so I had gone to one of my local banks to inquire about if they had rolls of America’s newest type coin only to be sold a brand new box of 2007 Lincoln cents. My bank claimed they don’t order new cents that often and they get most of their re-rolled from Brinks rather than the US Mint. So does this mean those 80 boxes are going to be in demand? You better believe it!

So essentially that means until the banks lessen their saturation of these copper covered zinc and copper Lincoln cents, they won’t have any. For collectors this presents a dilemma. Here we are, wanting to get our hands on the 4th reverse of the Lincoln cent in it’s 100 year life. The first was the 1909 VDB Wheat penny reverse, next the 1909 no VDB Wheat penny reverse, next the 1959 Lincoln Memorial penny, and now the 2009 Lincoln’s Birthplace or “Log Cabin” reverse of this new cent. All this time the original bust designed by Victor D. Brenner has remained unchanged. It is also the first coin that had a “real” person on it along with being the longest running coin produced by the US Mint.

This delay has to make you question the future releases of the next three 2009 Lincoln cents? They are supposed to be coming out every three months. If there is a surplus right now, adding more may cause even more demand and frenzy for collectors to obtain this four coin one year type run. Actually these four cents are three month type coins! They are definitely a must for a Lincoln cent collector but the question is how long will it take for you to get some of the fiery red cents! The only online store that I have found is HERE, the rest are all on auction sites.

Good luck and have fun!