A Lincoln Wheat Cent Hoard Case Study Part I - The 1940's

hello gang,

I recently picked up the new Cherry Pickers Guide and have to admit it was a real eye opener as to how many collectible varieties there are out there. I also realized I needed to get organized if I ever decided to do a detailed search my coins.

Background: 99% of my coins were collected/hoarded by my grandmother who worked at a Woolworths in Rhode Island from the 50's to the mid 70's. Besides Buffalo nickels which I described here:

https://goccf.com/t/163448

and 90% silver, being a thrifty "Swamp Yankee" she hoarded pennies and when she passed away I had a box with more than 10,000 cents to deal with.

First thing I did was sort them by type and cashed all the Memorial Cents and rolled $1.23 in 1943 steel cents. I separated the wheat's into decades, sorted the pre 1940 and rolled them from 1909-1939 chronologically separating out the mint marked ones and the 1909's. This past weekend I finally sorted the 1940's. Excluding the 1943 steel cents, below is what I found

Out of a total 611 coins, 21 had some luster, 5 were beautiful dark gold/purple toned from 1944, 45 & 46, all were from Philadelphia.

There are 5 Woodies. 4 from 1941, 1-1942 and again all from Philadelphia.

Distribution by year
1940 9.3%
1941 13.3%
1942 10.0%
1944 18.5%
1945 16.2%
1946 14.4%
1947 5.7%
1948 8.5%
1949 4.1%

Distribution by mint
P 87.4%
D 7.7%
S 4.9%

Note the east coast bias!!


here is a snapshot of the raw data



Part II: I think I'll tackle the 1950's (over 1,000) during the Christmas holidays!