Tuesday, March 30, 2010

History of the new 2010 penny

I used to collect pennies, and somewhere I have the old large cent penny from the early 1800’s:



Then we saw the first small penny, the flying eagle penny from 1856 to 1858:



That was superseded by the Indian Head penny from 1859 to 1909



And then we had the “Wheat Cent” penny from 1909 to 1958:



Finally the Lincoln memorial penny from 1959 to 2009:



Then this issue, only for 2009:



After a half century, the first change since the “wheat penny” went away with the new “Union Shield” penny for 2010: