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When did people start to hoard wheat cents?
CaptHenway
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A question for my fellow old timers.
I started collecting around 1960, when wheat cents were the norm and the new-fangled Memorial cents were the novelty. Over the next few decades the Memorials became more common, but there were always plenty of "wheaties" around. Then people started hoarding them, presumably because "they're not making those anymore." When was that?
I have no recollection of when they started to disappear. Can anybody remember?
TD
Numismatist. 50 year member ANA. Winner of four ANA Heath Literary Awards; three Wayte and Olga Raymond Literary Awards; Numismatist of the Year Award 2009, and Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Winner numerous NLG Literary Awards.
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as a kid we were saving them in the 70's
As a kid in the 80s I grabbed every one I found as it was uncommon and old! They must be worth something because they are old. I still grab them when found...
I don't remember exactly when I started saving them, but I would say the late 1970's if I had to guess. As far as people hoarding wheat pennies I would think that it may have happened in the early 1970's when copper prices went up.
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Like many of the old timers here, I had a paper route in 1960, and all of the proceeds from the newspaper were collected in change (the newspaper for six days was just 49Ȼ in those days). With 120 customers, that represented a lot of change to count each week. And it was looking at that endless amount of change each week that ultimately led me to coin collecting, and filling holes in Whitman blue folders. As TD pointed out, the Memorial cent was a novelty at that time, as most cents seen were still of the wheat ears design. Other than seeking one for each date and mint mark, I do not recall 'hoarding' wheat cents myself at that time. As others have stated here, it wasn't until the early 1970's that wheat cents gradually began disappearing from circulation, the result of collector hoarding. I imagine the rate of 'hoarding' began slowly, and increased over time, and likely varied with area of the country. It certainly did not begin all at one time, although the removal of silver from the larger denomination coins in 1965 likely hastened the rate of hoarding of wheat cents.
I also started about 1960 - lots of wheaties in circulation at that point, but I saved S mint cents when I found them.
I never really hoarded all wheaties but remember that fellow collectors started setting them aside later in the '60's.
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There was a little hoarding as early as 1965/66 when the clads came out and people thought there would be no new dates after '65. But it didn't really get going in earnest until 1968 or so when the wheats got down to about 25% of circulation. It ratcheted up from there until about 1975/'76 when the number of wheats hit sort of steady state at about .2%
Curiously this incidence only seems to have started dropping since people started saving out all the copper cents.
A couple of years ago I bought up an accumulation of $40 cents that appeared to have been rolled in 1964 at my bank - a customer had brought them in. Anyway in that accumulation only about 1/3 of the cents were wheats.
1959
I believe they became noticeably uncommon around 1973. My own hoarding of them began around 1974. The last I found in change was in October - a 1919.
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I don't know, but am working with an estate from sc, currently, a low estimate , there are roughly 2 million in this deal, maybe more. there are 3 connex storage buildings slam full from top to bottom with coins. One guy collected this over the past 30 years. I only let them bring 10-15k a week . Guy's son said he could bring 10-15k a week for the next 2 years and still have some left.
I'm going with 1909. Also, according to Q. David Bowers in American Coin Treasures and Hoards (pg. 100), a gentleman in NY located a big cache of bank wrapped rolls of 1910-1915 Philadelphia cents. That's gotta be the earliest that any wheats were hoarded.
I think we just found them all
There was a cent shortage around 1973-74. I wonder if it was caused in part by people suddenly hoarding wheaties?
I think I started putting them aside from change in about 1975 or 76. I just found one last week in my change.
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I doubt that there will be comparable hoarding of Lincoln Memorial cents, especially the Zincolns.
There must have been considerable hoarding of uncirculated wheat cents in the 1950's. Fifty-eight years after the last of them were minted, common date rolls are readily available at the $10 to $15 level. That's what rolls of circulated common date Indian cents were fetching a half-century after the last ones were made.
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I think it was because many people lacked common cents.
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They were NOT commonly found in everyday pocket change by the mid-Nixon era.
I cannot say when the big pull was, but I buy into cladking's timeline, MOL. I had some spending money by 1967 or 1968 and I can never remember wheats being common in circulation.
I liquidated an old collection this year and I would guess that the old gentleman started pulling "S" mintmarked cents not too long after the San Francisco Mint was downgraded to an Assay Office. The fellow had more of the "S" copper coins than I had ever seen in one group. He had to be pulling these out in the late 1950s. The cessation of coinage in San Francisco was certainly an important event in the evolution of popular coin collecting after WWII.
Trading full bags of uncirculated modern low face value coins was a big market in the early 1960s. People forget that.
The inflation psychology was in full gear in America by the time of the Arab oil embargo in 1973. "Buy today because it will be more expensive tomorrow" was the economic order of the day. There were also all kinds of announcements and rumors about Aluminum cents "soon". The inflation psychology and the rumors caused some cent hoarding (my Dad got a $50 face bag of 1974-D cents and then held them until he died forty years later), but the wheats were already gone well before that.
I started saving them in 1964.
As a YN, I was 13 YO in 1959 when the Memorial Cents were introduced. I hoarded rolls of Memorial cents, but at 50 cents per roll I never recovered my safe deposit box cost to store them for 30 years. Wheat cents had been minted in very large volumes and were very common. I recall seeing them in my pocket change until the 1980's, although not frequent. But if I received one today, would I save it........no way. I would just smile and move on.
OINK
I started really scrutinizing my change around 1970, and wheats were even then noticeably uncommon.
1908 ...
See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
My grandfather was doing it in the 60s
Early 70's for me. Wheaties found were dutifully cleaned up with Brasso and put away as valuable treasure made more so because they were shiny again...
In 1967, I was 10. Went to work with my dad on weekends. He was the manager of a large department store. He parked me in the cash room counting and rolling cents. I didn't get to run the counting machines. About 20 to 30 percent were wheat cents. I wanted them all but dad had me on a limit of about two rolls for the weekend. Fun times.
1959
Maybe a better question is why are people STILL hoarding them. As a cent collector I find it ridiculous. The Billions and billions being held like they are going to jump from the incredible value of 2-3 cents each to $10 each some day - I don't think so. To me its one reason there are so few YN's entering the hobby - because us old geezers are keeping them. But obviously not me - everyone end up with goes back in circulation.
WS
I remember this era, stores (smaller retail chains/Mom & Pop stores) were rounding up to a nickel if you did not have exact change. So if something rang up for .91 cents, they charged you .95
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It was already underway by the late 1960's. By the early 1980's I heard of a local hoard of over 2 million wheatbacks.
When I started collecting in 1972, I used to get rolls of cents to get some wheats for my blue Whitman folder. I would say about 1/3 to 1/4 of the rolls at that time were wheat cents and mostly from the 50's, with the occasional 1944 or '45 mixed in. Of course I was looking at all the 1972's too! By the late '70's, it seems that supply had dried up. Now it's a big deal if just one shows up; my last one was a nice smooth 1918 cent from within the past year or so.
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As a YN in the 1960's, I save everything up to 1939, Volume 1 blue book, but not the 1940. Also save Steel cents.
Bought my last proof set in 1970
Then Uncle Sam came tap tap taping on my door, free all expenses paid trip, all the rice paddies you cared to slog through, and then marriage and kids, and by 1982, when I started dipping my toes back in, they were effectively gone.
I was living out of the U.S. for a lot of years - Europe, Caribbean etc. - so did not really see the demise of Wheat cents.... Certainly noticed it when I returned.... I did start saving them in the late 80's.... though not diligently at that time. I do have a lot of rolls of Wheaties.....put away over the years....I do save them now when found in pocket change or the 'take a cent/leave a cent' tray.... I must go through them one day... then put them back in circulation.
Cheers, RickO
We gave the customers the option of 1c stamps. For a time, the stamps and pennies shared the space in the cash register. IIRC, a lot of the customers passed on the stamps.
Thank you all for your input!
TD
No idea, but here is a 45 year historical chart for copper
According to coinflation . com , wheat cents (and early Memorials) are worth more than double face in metal value alone. Even the Zincolns have about 4/5 of their face value in metal.
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i started for myself in the late 60's. fwiw i guess
I think the majority started when it became common knowledge that the " penny " was worth more in scrap metal than face value.
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My Grandfather and I were always searching rolls in the late 70's and taking the wheaties out of circulation. He was a fiscal Republican and the one thing he did in his later days and hoarding these pennies was to give them out to unsuspecting Halloween trick or treaters in lou of candy. I can tell you that most were not happy with my grandfather's choice. He would also speckle in some buffalo nickels in the mix. I can appreciate it today, even if I found it crazy. My grandfather was a smart man.
I rarely saw them in the wild in the mid 70s.
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When the memorial cent came out in 1959 it was widely scorned. I didn't especially care for it either but thought it was an improvement on a couple sprigs of wheat and didn't deserve to be called the "trolley car penny". It seemed to demean the Lincoln Memorial as well which deserved it even less.
It would have been difficult at that time to say if anyone was hording wheats or not since everyone was collecting them. Almost every one of my friends was looking through change for that elusive '55-S or dreaming of finding the S/ vdb. No one cared about Gems or varieties but they sure cared about elusive dates and brand new rolls to set aside. Lots of the memorials were set aside too and even in bag quantities but, of course, like all roll collecting this mostly stopped in 1965.
I never found the memorial cents to be of much interest due to how common they were until early this century when I saw how many of the zincolns were corroded. Now even the mint set memorials back to 1965 are developing problems.
There were countless billions of wheat cents in circulation in 1959 and it's hard to believe that many people foresaw them disappearing at that time. If it weren't for the tremendous attrition on cents it would have taken a great deal longer to dilute the wheats in circulation but even then attrition exceeded 3% annually. They were getting noticeably outnumbered by the late-'60's.
The attrition is so high now it won't be more than a few years until the memorials are rarely seen. It's likely in the 6% area but I haven't really looked in years.
But that did not happen until the late 1980's. From what people say, the Wheaties were long gone by then.
I stand corrected kinda lost track of the original topic of this thread.. Yes your probably right the wheaties were getting scarce but the jump in copper prices started another version of hoarding looking for the copper vs zinc cents.
Bob
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I'm curious to see when the shield back cents take over the #1 slot from memorial reverses. Same goes for Jefferson nickels with the new obverse versus the old. Already see it with quarters as most of my change now is either a state quarter of a national park quarter, no so many eagles out there anymore.
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Interesting observations there.
I agree with you.
Pre-1999 quarters are running about 35-40 percent here; the hideously ugly 2006-present Roger Daltrey nickels are at about 30 percent, and Shields are running close to 40 percent.
I never thought it would be unusual to see a Memorial in change, but those days are not too far in the future.