Wagnabbit: 1943 copper penny was a ‘mistake’

Returning to the topic of the 1943 U.S. steel pennies that were produced during World War II, it’s noteworthy that up to 40 “regular pennies” may have slipped through the U.S. Mint facilities during the “changeover.”

These “error coins” are highly treasured. Some may be worth up to $1.5 million today, according to Andrew Adamo, founder of Bullion Shark Coin Company of Old Westbury, N.Y.

When the U.S. Congress authorized the use of substitute materials to make pennies, in order to redirect supplies of copper, zinc and tin to support military production, the U.S. Mint started manufacturing pennies out of low-grade steel, while giving each coin a thin zinc coating.

Hence, the new 1943 pennies were silver-colored instead of copper-colored, except for the few “error coins.”

How could this “screw up” happen?

Adamo explained: “A tiny number” of copper-alloy pennies “were mistakenly struck” in early 1943 on “some copper planchets had been accidently left in the hoppers when the steel cents were being made.”

(“Planchets” are the round metal disks that are ready to be struck as coins, or “blanks.”)

Journalist Susan Headley said another possible explanation is that some of the copper planchets from 1942 may have gotten stuck, wedged into the corners of the large, mobile bins that moved the blank planchets around the mint. These bins had trap doors, and the planchets could have become caught in the crevices.

The late Darran Simon, a senior writer with CNN, concluded that the copper planchets “eventually became dislodged and were fed into the coin press, along with the wartime steel blanks. The few resulting copper cents were lost in the flood of millions of steel cents struck in 1943 and escaped detection by quality control measures.”

Adamo says 27 of these 1943 copper pennies are confirmed to exist and have been graded.

Interestingly, these coins have been traced back to all three U.S. Mint facilities – Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco.

This adds to the mystique that surrounds the story and inspires coin collectors to “keep hunting.”

The first person to discover a copper penny minted in 1943, according to Headley, was Kenneth S. Wing Jr., 14, of Long Beach, Calif.

He collected coins as a hobby, and in 1944, he found a copper penny that was minted in San Francisco “hiding in” one of the rolls of pennies he got from the bank. Wing never sold it.

After he died in 1996, the coin was found in a safety deposit box. Family heirs sold the coin in 2008 for $72,500. It was resold in 2018 for $228,000.

Another teenager also discovered one of the famous copper 1943 pennies.

He was Don Lutes Jr., 17, of Pittsfield, Mass., who received the “ultra-rare Lincoln penny in 1947 as change when buying lunch at the Pittsfield High School cafeteria,” said Henri Neuendorf, an art dealer in New York City.

After high school, Don Lutes enlisted in the Army and served as a cryptographic specialist with the U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea from 1952-54.

“Lutes knew something was special about the coin: the copper coloring was distinctly different from the silvery steel variety in circulation at the time. So, Lutes decided to hold onto it,” Neuendorf wrote.

Henri Neuendorf

After Lutes died in 2018, his penny, which was produced at the Philadelphia mint, was sold at auction for $204,000, with proceeds donated to the Berkshire (County) Athenaeum, the public library in his hometown of Pittsfield.

Sarah Miller of Heritage Auctions in New York City told Neuendorf that the “accidental copper coins from 1943” are considered “the Holy Grail of mint errors.”