Theory On Steel Cent Disappearance

I found one that is so rusty that you could not see the date. My guess is that People kept them as oddities while the rest were collected by the government or they got rusted by circulation and were mistook for regular pennies.

My only steelie (Well, my only wild caught one anyway) came from the reject bin at a Wells Fargo. I was very surprised to see it.
I think their scarcity was caused by a combination of things.
Magnets take most of them, and the ones that are recognizable as steel pennies are probably being hoarded because people percieve them to be super special.

I've pulled a few out of the back of the coin hopper at TD Bank. I've also pulled about $10 of modern Canadian coins. Sometimes the tellers won't let me, other times I just do it and hope they don't yell at me.

Since the steel cent is the only magnetic coin that the US has ever made, most machines do use a magnet to either catch or reject all magnetic coins. This explains why new (2000s) Canadian cents are almost impossibe to find in the US, while older (1950s-90s) ones are pretty easy to find.

The only steelie cents that end up in bank rolls are those that were either manually loaded, or loaded by a machine that isn't good at sorting out foreigns. Personally, I've never seen one in circulation.

not sure if this counts but I bought 10000 wheat cents and have been going through them and I am not even 1/4 way done and I have found 51 52 55 so far.

I found this one in a customer wrapped roll in Canada about a year ago.

I didn't find them but I have a half dozen rolls I acquired in an inherited dealer's collection. Some are in really poor condition, some very nice. I have only opened one tube of them to inspect, rest are still sealed.

Rick