1909 S VDB-Values 60 Or More Years Ago?

The 09-SVDB was recognized as a special coin shortly after it was released. It was pretty much hoarded from the get go. Many were saved in high grades. I would estimate the survival rate is as pretty close to 100% of the original mintage as you could get!

I just looked through some old catalogues of mine from the 60's and the SVDB was readily available in mid and high grades. The price disparity between "circ" and "unc" was not that great by today's standards. My March 1969 issue of Coinage magazine shows them being offered for sale by "DE Benge" in California for $105 in "good" and $130 in "very fine". (On a side note this dealer had a $3 minimum order and charged 40 cents postage on unders under 30$!). Surprisingly, I could not find them in any ads where they were being offed in "unc" condition.

My 1931 B Max Mehl Star Coin Encyclopedia and Premium Catalog doesn't even offer to buy them! My 1952 B Max SALES price list number 31 shows a blank (.....) for both the 09-S and 09-SVDB. Evidently the prices for those were volatile and speculative during that time period. On a side note B Max offered 1856 Flying Eagles for 150$ in good and 375$ in Unc! Sounds cheap but it was still a lot of money for the working stiff in the 1950's!

It's nice to travel back in time and look through these old catalogs and price lists.

Thanks, CCF guys. From the limited sample provided in the link, all the key dates had roughly the same appreciation over the years.

One thing that puzzles me a bit is that if so many were saved, why is the price so high? 484,000 were minted. Are there 484,000 collectors who want them? Are there even 484,000 collectors in the US?

Seem to remember a story of the mint limiting how many of the "new" cent would be distributed per customer, limited to ten I think it was. Paperboys who got them in change were selling for 5c each because of the run on them. Remember SF minted 1909S Indians, S-VDB's and plain S's

My reprint Red Book from 1947 Lists 09SVDB as Fine=$8.00 Unc=$15.00 The lowly Philly VDB was $.05 for Fine, $.20 for Unc and a whopping $6.00 for a PROOF!

Because it has always been pushed as a rare key since the start. It wasn't really until the internet and the TPGs that some of the keys were exposed for how available they really are. If you had enough money you could basically build a grading set of it in a day. Even with that happening though you still have a lot of collectors who grew up thinking it was a special coin so it is still special to them.

It does have the S VDB going for it being an S mint and a coin in the series that isn't like all the others.




There's far more collectors than that.

You can count on it.

Holy cow... look at some of the other entries! 1856 FE $10, 1877 IH $1, 1909s IH .75...

I need a time machine...

However, remember that similar to the 1916D Mercury dime, China has been making many, many of those for a long time. Many fakes have been made by gluing an S to a VDB Cent. So out of the 484,000 originally made by the Mint, today we could well have billions of those floating around. I've always wondered how many collectors have a fake one in their Albums and don't know.
Glad so many replies about values. I have all the Red Books from 1st to present and they saved me the trouble of running around looking this all up.