Lincoln Cent Help

This is almost like asking who your favorite car maker is. Lots of Ford guys, lots of Chevy guys. You'll end up with a list (jumbled) of the top 7 companies.

I'd think maybe take the 5-10 references you are listing - compile their rankings, assign a value to spots 1-10 and build a consensus top 10. The top 5 will likely be almost evident - with the next 5 varying widely.

Also - are you including errors & variations?

That's a difficult question to answer with all the possibilities. The 1914-D is much more difficult to find than the 1909-S VDB which is why you see it higher on the list.

MtnCoinMan, this should be pretty simple to piece together. The price of a coin is completely dependent on the ratio of availability to demand. Simply put, the highest priced coins will top your list.

Unfortunately it's not so simple to dismiss grade from your equation. Case in point when you compare an 09-S VDB to a 14-D. In the lower grades the S-VDB is significantly higher and in the higher grades their roles are reversed. This is because from the beginning the 09-S VDB was saved in large numbers by collectors, so even though there were far fewer minted the higher grade examples are more abundant. The 14-D wasn't notable during the time so far fewer were "saved" from circulation.

A side note, in my opinion the 1909-S VDB is hands-down the most popular US coin. I can't think of a coin with 484,000+ minted, was saved in large quantities and and is worth nearly as much. Perhaps I'm missing something, can anyone else think of one?