Lincolns Pulled From A Mixed Bag Of Foreign Coins

Hi all,

As I noted some time ago in this thread, I recently bought a 10kg bag of mixed world coins, sourced from the German federal bank. Amongst the 2173 coins in the bag, 664 were Lincoln cents - not quite a third of the total number of coins in the bag.

Now, this didn't annoy me quite as much as it probably would have annoyed most of you guys, because I'm in Australia; Lincoln cents are "weird foreign coins" to me, just as much as they are to people in Germany. I've finally sat down and sorted through these Lincolns one by one, and thought I'd share my perspectives with you, as well as a few questions.

Amongst the coins were 30 (both copper and zinc) that were too badly damaged/corroded to be collectable, by any civilized definition of that word. Of the undamaged coins, there were 7 wheaties, the oldest of which were two 1944-S. There were also 122 pre-1982 copper memorial cents, and the rest were Zincolns. It was a relatively new bag, so there were plenty of 2008 coins, but no 2009.

I can assemble a near-complete date-and-mintmark set going back to 1967, just from coins in this bag. I already have a near-complete set of LMCs, so I'm not going to be fishing out too many "keepers" for my own collection. There is, however, one noticeable gap in the series: 1988. Most dates and mintmarks down to 1978 have at least half a dozen of each mintmark present in the bag, but there were only two well-worn 1988 cents in the bag, and both were 1988-D. I already have one of each mintmark in my collection, but I'm wondering... are 1988 cents particularly scarce in circulation, or is this just a strange statistical anomaly from this bag?

Many of the coins appeared to be in very good state of preservation; many of the older coppers still had considerable mint lustre; there's a 1961-D that looks AU. Clearly these coins weren't all sourced from modern travellers and tourists; some older collections and accumulations must have been handed in and included as well.

Finally, are there any major varieties or types I should be looking for in certain dates, especially for 1967-up? Particularly anything that isn't mentioned in the Red Book?