How long until Lincoln Memorial pennies start disappearing?

I was born 15 years after the last wheat penny was minted. Even when I was a young kid, finding a wheat penny was a special treat and I've saved every one I have found since then. My parents had a wooden box full of old coins, the majority of them being wheat pennies, and I got hooked on them. Even in the days when I didn't have as much interest in coins as I do now I still collected every one I came across.

Now that the Lincoln Memorial pennies have been out of print for 8 years now, how long until they start becoming rare in circulation, assuming that the penny will remain in production indefinitely? Will they ever reach the legendary status of the wheat penny? How long until somebody excitedly posts on this forum that they found a 1989 penny like it was something special?

I imagine that wheats were the majority of the pennies out there well into the 1960s. The copper Memorials are obviously the ones that will disappear first, but eventually all LM pennies will become rarer as time goes on.

And when are they going to mint a shield penny in proper copper?

 

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I hunt bank rolls and have seen the numbers drop significantly, but not to a point they will go away any time soon. In my local area, Memorials still make up around 75% of the roll, with coppers making up 20-30% of the total roll. I also used to find at least 1 wheat cent for every 4 rolls I searched. This last time I bought $50, there were no wheats, but 3 Canadians. I'm hoping it was just a bad batch.

 

I am actually searching a roll right now, being home today, I will tally the numbers shortly.

 

Only 8 Shield Cents, 4 are from 2015, way less than normal for this box. I found 19 coppers. Everything else was zinc.

Some rolls are different, some had 20 shields, some 2 coppers. One had two wheat cents, 1926 and 1940.

 

Who cares?

There are billions of them

 

Obviously the OP.

 

I bet the U.S. one-cent coin will soon be removed from circulation.

Canada did this 3 years ago: http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/about-the-mint/phasing-out-the-penny-6900002#.Vp5u___2bX4

I'm also guessing the nickel will then be replaced with something cheaper to mint. Maybe a copper-coated zinc 5-cent coin?

 

I'm guessing they would want it to look the same as the new one. I am guess they would do stainless steel.

 

I doubt if the ever will - the cost is just too much. I suspect they will try to eliminate the cent coin first.

 

We will transition out of physical money long before Memorials become "uncommon."

 

The once cent should go away because of it's lack of use in commerce, regardless of the cost to produce it. Kudos to Canada for making the right decision.

 

^No.

 

^2x NO!

 

Basically the OP kind of answered his own question.... He was born 15 yrs after last wheat cent (1958's) so around 1973. As a kid, he didn't find that many in circulation, it was a 'treat'. I will presume he was at least 10-12 yrs old to realize this, so let's take 11 years as that amount, so around 1984. So that is about 26 years after the last one was minted.

Based on the above, presuming the minting of cents between 1959 and 1984 was enough to keep up for use yet still have the old ones 'disappear' (so called, just harder to find) based on population and usage, then possibly, as long as the mint kept up with the same judgement calls (minting enough to promote current usage, yet enough to have the old ones disappear, i.e., either through collecting, stored away in penny jars or ruined through usage and/or lost) then it should be about 26 years from the last memorial minted (2008), so maybe around the year 2034).

But, it is already more than 26 years since the last copper cent was minted (1982) and the ones before that are not terribly hard to find, which then also coincided with 2008 being the last year of the memorial cent. So perhaps it will be longer this time around. I still find some really good looking cents from the 1970s at times. Rarely do I find the same from the 1960's and almost no good looking 1959 ones. Most of the nicer looking ones seem to be from 1995 on right now.

Maybe the thing to do is to simply start noting not just what wheaties you are seeing in CHR but also note how many of the pre 1990 coins are there. It's been 26 years since then.

 

Memorials won't disappear in this narrator's lifetime.

 

A few months ago I bought a bunch of CWR cents that had been rolled from circulation apparently in 1964. I would estimate that about 35% of the cents were wheat, all the way from 1910-58. The rest were early sixties and a lot of them were still BU. Gotta love "estate" coins

 

Bad money drives good money out of circulation. It's not the Lincoln Memorial but pre 1982 Memorials that will be disappearing.

 

Adding to the Memorials disappearance is the fact that since they buy so little, many simply throw them away (i.e. on the ground or in the garbage). I probably throw several hundred in the garbage annually - not only because they're worthless, but also because most of the cents I receive in change are corroded junk.

 

I have no problem with the opinion of keeping the cents. I like cents(rarely do I make any), but the US Mint produces commerce tokens. If they aren't being used for commerce, they shouldn't be produced. Maybe they should go the way of the Kennedy Halves and go collector only issue. Probably a big can of worms here, but my opinion on the matter.

 

Just because the Canadians did something right doesn't mean we will learn from them. They introduced a small dollar coin in 1987 and discontinued their dollar note in 1989 making the coin successful. We introduced a small dollar in 1979, made more in 1999, made a new coin in a metal that wouldn't be confused with the quarter in 2000, made yet another dollar coin in 2007, and another in 2009 and we still haven't figured out that we need to drop the note if we want them to be successful.

As for when they will disappear, about a year after the cent is discontinued.