1700–2026 · Mintages · Grade ladders

Penny Value by Year

Every penny year from 1700–2026, with mintages and what each is worth. 19 years are covered in full so far — the rest are being added.

Prices updated: September 3, 2026

About penny values

This page collects every cent we have priced, year by year. The table above is the short answer: find your date, read across for the mintage and the range, and follow the year for the full breakdown by mint mark and any varieties recorded for that date — plus grade-by-grade PCGS values where they have been added. The plan covers 1700–2026; 19 years are priced so far, and the rest are being added.

What decides the price

Two things decide what a cent is worth, and neither is the year on its own. The first is condition: an ordinary circulated example of almost any date runs from about $0.01, because these coins were made in the hundreds of millions and most of them were spent. The second is the mint mark, the small letter beside the date — no letter means Philadelphia, D means Denver, S means San Francisco, and the mints did not strike equal numbers. Where those two factors line up badly for a date, the price moves — and the year pages show by how much.

The top of the market

The top of this market is a long way from pocket change. The highest recorded public sale among the dates priced here is $840,000, for a 1943 cent at Heritage Auctions. That is an auction result, not a guide value: one coin, one day, in front of whoever was bidding. It is worth knowing about because it shows what the ceiling looks like, and worth keeping in proportion because the overwhelming majority of cents from any year are worth what the table says.

Mintages across the series

Mintages across the cents on this page vary more than most people expect. 1943 is the smallest at 1,093,838,670 struck; 1983 the largest at 14,219,554,428. That is a ratio of roughly 13 to 1. Mintage is not the same as survival, though, and this is where most price guides quietly mislead: a coin struck in the billions but spent for thirty years can be far harder to find undamaged than a scarcer date that collectors set aside on the day it came out.

Varieties

Varieties are where the money is on this denomination. Of the years priced here, 7 carry catalogued varieties — 1943, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1983, 1984, 2025 — and 13 in total. A variety is not the same as damage: it is a difference in the die itself, repeated on every coin struck from it, which is why collectors pay for it. Doubled dies, repunched mint marks and off-metal strikes are the usual kinds. Each year page lists the ones recorded for that date, with what they are worth and, where the coin has sold publicly, what it actually brought.

Designs in this series

The cent has not looked the same throughout. Among the dates priced here the designs are: 1 Cent "Lincoln - Wheat Ears Reverse" (1943); 1 Cent "Lincoln - Wheat Ears Reverse - Steel" (1943); 1 Cent "Lincoln Memorial Cent" (Bronze) (1965–1981); 1 Cent "Lincoln Memorial Cent" (copper plated zinc) (1983–1984); 1 Cent "Lincoln Cent" (Birth and Early Childhood) (2009); 1 Cent "Lincoln Cent" (Formative Years) (2009). A change of design is worth noticing because it usually resets what collectors chase: the first year of a new type is saved in quantity, the last year of an old one often is not, and prices follow that behaviour more closely than they follow the mintage figures.

Which mints struck it

Across the years on this page the mints contributed unevenly: Philadelphia 69,710,325,088, Denver 56,869,748,953, San Francisco 2,097,738,064. The letter is the first thing to check on any coin you are holding, and the one detail people most often overlook — a missing letter is not a missing coin, it means Philadelphia, which struck most of the circulating supply for most of the twentieth century.

How to read the prices

A word on the numbers, because two different kinds of price get mixed up constantly. Values for worn coins are retail estimates for raw, ungraded pieces — what a collector might pay, not what a dealer will give you. A dealer buying from you typically offers 50–80% of that. Values in the top grades come from the PCGS price guide and apply to certified coins, sealed in a holder with a grade on the label. The gap between the two is not a markup: it is the cost and the risk of getting a coin graded, and for most dates on this page that cost is more than the coin is worth.

Where to spend attention

If you are scanning the table for where to spend attention, the dates that reach highest in certified grades are 1943 ($1,700,000), 1975 ($10,500), 2009 ($5,000). Those are guide values for coins in a holder at the very top of the scale, not what a worn example brings, and each of them is reached by a handful of coins out of enormous mintages. The practical reading is not «this date is valuable» but «on this date, condition is worth checking carefully before you spend it».

Checking your coin

Whatever the year, the routine is the same and takes under a minute. Read the date. Find the mint mark — on the obverse, just below the date — and note whether there is one. Look at the surface under a lamp, tilting the coin: original coins have a soft even lustre, cleaned coins show fine parallel lines, and a coin that has been in a pocket for years shows flattened high points. Then check the year page for varieties, because that is the one thing you cannot judge by eye without knowing what to look for.

If you have a cent in front of you, start with the date and the mint mark, then look at the surface. Do not clean it — cleaning strips the original surface, graders label the coin as cleaned, and the value drops sharply and permanently. It is the most common and most expensive mistake a beginner makes, and it cannot be undone. Once you know what you have, the year page will tell you whether it is worth doing anything else about it.

Designs in this series

Value chart by year

Worn values are retail estimates for raw coins. Top-grade values come from the PCGS price guide for certified examples where PCGS data is in — otherwise the column shows the highest circulated price on record for that date. Follow a year for the full breakdown by mint mark.