Lincoln wheat 1943

No mint mark; not sure of composition. I’ve quite a few wheat coins, silvers, halves, buffalo nickels,l and various coins from different countries. A little overwhelmed, not sure where to start. 🤪🙃help!

that penny is from before the war broke out because when the war started 1943 pennies were steel. that penny is pretty rare, and you should hold onto it

Very interesting and informative info on this coin, thank you for this. I recently came up on literary 100s if not thousands of coins, about 80% domestic, 20% foreign. Itll take me weeks to get through them. 😳

Lucky!!!!!!! Let us know what you find.

So you have a 1943 Philadelphia mint Steel Wartime Cent.

In 1942 the US declared copper and nickel as a wartime metal to be used to make shell casings and other items for the war effort. In accordance with the reserve on these metals the US mint changed some of the compositions of its coinage. In 1943 one cent coins were struck in steel and plated with zinc. The outcry from the public at the new coinage being sometimes mistaken for dimes or unable to be used in vending machines (yes vending machines used to take one cent) caused the mint to start using recycled shell casings in 1944 to return the “penny” to its original copper color. In addition US nickels were changed to copper(56%)/silver(35%)/manganese (9%)thru 1945. They returned to minting 5 Cent “Nickels” on copper-nickel planchets in 1946.