Lincoln Cents

To me....any time you tell someone "this is the end, there will be no more" people start acting stupid and hoard for hoardings sake. If they announced today there would be no more Lincoln cents...there would be a mad dash for coin by the general public and prices would spike, temporarily most likely, long term, unlikely.

True that at first there would be a run on Pennies if it was stated that there will be no more. Then after a while all such prices should drop due to less and less people collecting them. Possibly the most common coin collected in the USA is the Cent because almost every kid collects them. Kids start right away with the Cent since it is available, cheap, fun, in large quantities and since other kids collect them, makes for a popular hobby. If there are no more being made, it will become like the 2, 3 and 20 cent type of coin. Still a collectable but without a massive amount of collectors, prices will become less and less.
The Cent, (Penny) will end up like the Half Dollar. Something of the past.

I believe it has been said on CCF numerous times, that the Lincoln Cent is the most collected coin by amateurs and novices, as well as seasoned veterans and professionals.
In Numismatics, the Cent is just the most collected coin out there.

Now......IMO, it isn't the newer "Zincolns" that are necessarily highly prized and highly sought after, it's the 1909 to at least 1958 collections that are the most valuable and hardest to complete generally.
So, this would not be any different or change ANYTHING if they stopped making the Lincoln Cent.

The ongoing Cent, (1959 -2012 and beyond) is easily attainable to keep everyone's collection "current", which is, of course, important......and to find them in good gem/BU/MS condition can certainly be a challenge, but it doesn't impact or destroy the interest because there would be an "end" date here.
The ability to put a collection together from circulation is not without merit......but once they're no longer in circulation or produced by the Mint.....I still don't see the attractiveness of this collection deteriorating all that much.
There will be many "new" collectors who may or may not get into the Lincoln Cent at that point, due to that reason....but they'll still be available in the marketplace of the Coin World for INFINITY !

The sheer "popularity" of the Lincoln Cent will be there for many many lifetimes to come, IMO.
The "love" and "passion" that Lincoln collectors have for this coin isn't due to the fact that they are still being minted.......this will never die easily, even a generation after the last Lincoln Cent coin is produced by the United States Mint.
This coin has it's place in numismatic history sealed forever..... (even if Copper and Zinc never attain Gold or Silver values ! .... ..)

Ahhh.....but then you only mentioned...... potential future "value"..... hard dollars and cents MONEY they might be worth.
And now I bring out my Crystal Ball...........

Nobody can know the answer to that question.......it's truly UNKNOWABLE !
Anything to the contrary would just be "theorizing" and "conjecture"......similar to "What will the price of Silver be next year ?"......Ha Ha.......only people with special powers can know these things ! .....

I agree.

I'm not sure if they would do that, since they have to order the blanks from another company and I don't know if they would still do that or not, with such a small quantity.

Imagine going from billions of cent blanks made to just tens of millions or less. Yeah, they could charge a lot more, but I don't know if they will sell them as rolls though. If they were just offered in the BU and Proof sets, it would just be a few million blanks made. And I don't know if demand would increase enough on the sets, especially if their prices took a big jump up in price to include the cents.

Or I guess they could order a billion of them and have them for many years to come.

I say, if they are not going to mint the coins for circulation, then don't mint them for the sets. The whole point of the sets is to show what is being minted for use. Otherwise, why doesn't the Mint include the 2 cent, 3 cent, etc in our sets today then?

I bet that the NIFC half dollar is really driving up the price of the sets now. It is quite expensive to make the hubs, dies, etc for such a small mintage.

I hope they decide not to include them, if it is going to drive up the price even more for the sets. They are over priced as it is, for their quality. Too many bag marks on many coins of most sets, especially the BU ones.

Personally I would prefer that NIFC coins not be included in mint sets and proof versions of NIFC business strike coins not be included in proof sets, and I hope we'd eliminate the NIFC Kennedy half after its 50th anniversary here in a couple of years. It's somewhat ludicrous that the 2012 Mint Sets will include 28 coins with a face value of $15.82 (assuming my hasty math is correct) of which 8 coins with a face value of $2.82 are actually intended for circulation. 71% of the present-day mint sets are practically commemorative coins at this point. (Nonetheless, I'll still buy it because I want to keep sets currents and would like to complete the Presidential dollar series, because I'm a fool like that).

We're presently down to circulating coins of four denominations (1c, 5c, 10c, 25c) and if the cent is eliminated, down to three (5c, 10c, 25c), assuming those in charge don't come to their senses and eliminate the paper $1 so that a $1 coin actually circulates. After ATB ends in 2021, that would leave us with only six-coin mint sets and three-coin proof sets. While I would like the return to simpler times and smaller annual sets, I can't imagine the Mint would go back to making such small sets, given that the seniorage on all of the NIFC coins included in sets must be huge.