Silver and Steel

For many of you out there, including myself, the coins pictured above are pretty hard to come by. It wasn't until five months after I started MD'ing that I found my first wheat penny. And even then it was hardly identifiable. However, since then I have found nine more. I can't attest more that location really is the key.

Above you see the obverse and reverse of three coins. These three coins are my favorite of what I can loosely call a US coin collection, as I don't "really" collect US currency. But a few things are just pretty neat to own.

I'll start with the coin in the middle, which should be easily ID'd by anyone reading this. It's just a plain old wheat penny. But for me, it's not only a wheat, but a 1929 wheat, my oldest dug coin. But what makes it special, is that accept for the blemish on the reverse, the coins is in unreal shape for a dug wheat. Just a rinse in water and it looks like what you see.

The coin on the far left is indeed a wheat penny, but you may be scratching your head as to why it's nearly black. Well if you take a closer look by expanding the image (just click on it) and see the date, you'll notice it reads, "1943." Yessiree Bob, that there is a 1943 Steel Wheat Penny. My great friends Snowy and Joe over at FMDF sent it to me for X-Mas. Here is the blurb about the 1943 Steel Wheat from The Red Book:

"Owing to a shortage of copper during the critical war year 1943, the Treasury Department resorted to the use of zinc-coated steel for cents. No bronze cents were officially issued in 1943. A few specimens struck on bronze planchets by error are known to exist."

And lastly, the hard to find Mercury Dime. I didn't dig this either, but rather again received it as a gift from Vlad and Carol Kononov of FMDF. Sadly, it's my the only one I own. It's a nice looking too for a 64 year old coin. And let's not forget, it's .900 silver!