1909 VDB wheat penny 0

[JohnLewis1]

hello everyone i recently came across a bunch of wheat pennies about 500 pounds of them and i have a lot of ones from 1909 that say VDB on the back but there is no S on the front under the date im very new to this but would love some info and help if anyone minds thank you!

[Coinbuf]

Welcome to the forum.   There were almost 28 million 1909 VDB cents minted (as opposed to less than 500 thousand of the 1909 S VDB) and because it was a first year for the Lincoln cent design a large portion of the mintage was horded.   As a result, these are quite plentiful and easy to find in all but the very highest grades.   It is not possible to determine the grades of all your coins in a group shot like this, however, all your coins are circulated examples with values that will range from less than a dollar to perhaps three dollars each retail at most.    So none of your coins would be worth the cost of submitting for grading, but they all look like very nice coins for collectors looking for album coins.   The problem is the supply is greater than the demand for lower grade examples and selling individually can be a challenge.

Many new collectors think that a coin this old must be valuable, however, that is not true in every case.   Value is a function of a coin's condition and rarity, you need to have at least one of those conditions to drive demand.   In the case of circulated 1909 VDB cents neither of those conditions can be achieved.

There are two varieties that NGC does recognize and those have a slightly higher value than a non variety example.   So you might want to see if any of your coins are one of those two varieties, you can see the identifying features by reviewing the variety plus section of the main NGC website.

 

Edited May 30, 2022 by Coinbuf

[JohnLewis1]

On 5/29/2022 at 9:56 PM, Coinbuf said:

Welcome to the forum.   There were almost 28 million 1909 VDB cents minted (as opposed to less than 500 thousand of the 1909 S VDB) and because it was a first year for the Lincoln cent design a large portion of the mintage was horded.   As a result, these are quite plentiful and easy to find in all but the very highest grades.   It is not possible to determine the grades of all your coins in a group shot like this, however, all your coins are circulated examples with values that will range from less than a dollar to perhaps three dollars each retail at most.    So none of your coins would be worth the cost of submitting for grading, but they all look like very nice coins for collectors looking for album coins.   The problem is the supply is greater than the demand for lower grade examples and selling individually can be a challenge.

Many new collectors think that a coin this old must be valuable, however, that is not true in every case.   Value is a function of a coin's condition and rarity, you need to have at least one of those conditions to drive demand.   In the case of circulated 1909 VDB cents neither of those conditions can be achieved.

There are two varieties that NGC does recognize and those have a slightly higher value than a non variety example.   So you might want to see if any of your coins are one of those two varieties, you can see the identifying features by reviewing the variety plus section of the main NGC website.

 

Thank you for all the great info! I have literally 10,000 of these coins ranging from 1909 to like 1950 all in rolls all sorted by year and marks I can't wait to do research on them and figure out what they are 

[J P M]

Welcome to the forum. I Think the first thing you may want to purchase is a nice chair to sit in. If you have that many coins to look at you are going to need to save your back side. Good Luck

[Coinbuf]

On 5/30/2022 at 2:38 PM, JohnLewis1 said:

Thank you for all the great info! I have literally 10,000 of these coins ranging from 1909 to like 1950 all in rolls all sorted by year and marks I can't wait to do research on them and figure out what they are 

Sounds like you have several weekends ahead of you.    If you do not have one get yourself a redbook, you may even find one at your local library if you choose not to buy one.   While the pricing will not be completely relevant to the current market, it has all the information you need to determine which coins are more valuable and in demand.   I also suggest that you acquaint yourself with the NGC coin explorer section of NGC's website, between those two you have all the resources you need to do the research and learn what you have.

Should you wish a deeper dive into your coins here are a couple of excellent resource sites.

Variety Vista

Lincoln cent resource