A Penny is my thought

I guess, but I’m not certain, that I first met Mr. Lincoln by looking at the first money I ever had; a penny.  I must have asked one of my older sisters, perhaps it was Sissy,  who was this guy with a beard on my money.  But again I’m not sure.

Through the years I’ve known Mr. Lincoln as “honest Abe”, the one who freed the slaves, and the creator of the “Emancipation Proclamation”.  And then ultimately of the greatest speech of any President, “The Gettysburg Address”.

But for me, his importance and basic memory is the Penny.  Our smallest unit of money symbolizes our basic conception of worth.  Monetarily at least.  In my teens I became interested in coin collecting.  That interest didn’t last long after that adolescent time.  However I discovered many things about pennies.

Since 1865 the American penny had an Indianhead on the face of it but that changed in 1909.  The model for the Indianhead was a princess with a chief’s headdress.  But I digress. The U.S. Mints changed the coin to have Abraham Lincoln’s image on all pennies and continues to do so to the present time.  So, for the past 108 years, every American has carried Lincoln around with themselves whether they remembered it or not.

Lincoln pennies have many other historical highlights.  The top three are these:

1- In 1909, the first year of its minting the letters SVDB were inscribed on a small number of pennies.  To coin collectors these became extremely valuable and are now worth thousands of dollars.

2-In 1943, due to a military need for copper to make ammunition for the war effort, the U.S. Mint made pennies using mostly steel and zinc.  That special year  coin issue was not lost on me, because it was the year I was born.  “Now, ain’t that special” ,  to paraphrase a common theme on “laugh In” a television comedy special of the early 1970s.

3-The change to the reverse side of the penny in 1959 from the “wheat penny” to the Lincoln Memorial image.  And again, in 2010 the reverse was changed to a “shield”.

But, the iconic profile of the 16th President by Victor David Brenner remain the same.

So, for me, Lincoln is a “penny for my thoughts”.