How long till memorials become like wheats?

While searching cent rolls earlier today, I was struck with a thought. I was noticing that most rolls are still in a ratio of about 70/30 memorials over shields. And I was wondering how long it will be before memorial cents become like wheats? In 1959, there had been 50 years of wheats. How long was it until wheats became an unusual find in pocket change or rolls? I remember when I started collecting as a kid in the late 70's and wheats were already hard to find after only 20 years. Granted the number of memorial cents minted in their 50 years greatly outnumber the wheats minted in their 50 years, but will we be sitting here in another decade scouring cent rolls for memorials?

 

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In the early 1970’s I was super excited to find a wheat cent. They were treasures to me. Anyone that had even a vague interest in coins that I knew felt the same as I did....... I wondered why 1965-1998 quarters never were found to be interesting since they haven’t been minted now almost twenty years. I finally reached the conclusion that the mint just wore us out with constant new and changing designs. The young folks now only seem interested in finding errors. I think folks are just simply worn out with coin design changes these days. So in answer... I doubt there will be an interest in collecting the memorial reverses.

 

Where I'm at I see a 60/40 of shields over memorials.

With their zinc composition, how many will be any left in several decades?

 

That's a good point. In 1959, I presume it was a big deal when the change was made. But today, with 5 different quarters each year and a plethora of nickels and cent changes, perhaps people simply don't care and the memorials will continue to circulate alongside until attrition finally wins out.

 

I can guarantee I won’t be doing that

 

Not likely. I can still scarf up 'wheats around these parts, and folks in these parts could give a rats' touchy, so I expect the memorials to be readily plentiful in the future..........Or not.....

 

Memorial cents are worthless to collectors because of the composition. They are just not good quality.
Most also have high mintages that are in the billions (that's 9, yes nine zeros).
IMO, ones that make it long enough and are still BU may be worth something in the future.

 

LONG after I'm gone.

 

I think long before it will be hard to find LM reverses in a roll of Shield reverses, it will be hard to find a roll of cents in the wild.

 

There's a huge difference between wheat cents and memorials; wheat cents had only about a 3% attrition rate since they were first minted and it went down to only about a 1% rate by about 1973. Memorials have had a 4% rate at first and it's now up to about 5% for the copper and 7% for the zinc. Such huge attrition rates are whittling down the number available. The copper will literally come out of the woodwork for centuries but the zinc doesn't survive any conditions for long.

Finding nice well made and pristine examples of all the memorials is already an impossibility. While many dates are common they are all becoming less common every single day.

At no time will these ever become "rare". What will probably happen is people will wake up one day and notice that things have gradually changed to the point that all the memorials are scarcer in most grades than all the wheats. Even this will never make them rare. What will make them "rare" is when collectors actually start assembling sets and bidding up the tough dates. Now there are only a few hundred registry set collectors who care but when pennies are long gone and not seen everywhere there will be collectors for other grades as well.

If nothing changes (it will) memorials will be scarcer than wheats in only about 15 to 25 years.

 

Other than the handful of errors/DD's/etc., it will take centuries before memorials have any value other than 1¢ or copper melt. Just too dang many of them.

 

Anyone know of a good way to store zinc cents so that they stay nice? Will the ones in PCGS slabs then rot as well?

 

My own personal experience while roll searching is that the early 60's (esp. 61, 62, and 63) are harder to find than generic random-date wheats.

Great analysis Cladking, but its still hard to fathom that memorials would become more scarce than wheats. If, as you say, the zincolns eventually wear away, it would seem that the pre-82 coppers would have the same shelf life as the typical wheat.

 

Memorials will never become like wheats because wheats will still exist. Therefore when memorials become like wheats - wheats will become like indianheads. Indianheads will become like flying eagles and flying eagles will become like large cents. Large cents will become like - well I don't know what they will become like - maybe fugios? But anyway all I'm trying to say is - when memorials become like wheats - memorials will not be like wheats because wheats will be like indianheads.

 

Was thinking. In 1976 I was a coin (and girl) fueled, pimple faced teen. Coin design had not changed in my lifetime. Then the mint released the bicentennial quarters, halves and Ike’s. It was such an exciting time to be a young numismatist. Getting a bicentennial quarter in change was truly exciting.... now forty-odd years later we receive a new design quarter, cent or nickel and we hardly take notice. Change is good. Too much change leads to apathy and boredom. Until the US mint slows down these bombarding us with new designs I don’t believe we will see the excitement that comes with finding an obsolete design in our pocket change. The average consumer doesn’t know what is obsolete!

 

People have already begun hoarding circulated pre-1982 copper Lincoln Memorial cents. There are several threads in these forums that talk about it. I can't envision modern circulated small cent coinage being valuable in the future. Between 1964 and 2005, except a couple years, the mint produced over a million mint sets. From those mint sets there are plenty of red mint state Lincoln Memorial cents for the dwindling coin collecting crowd. In a decade Lincoln Memorials will be common again, because, the heirs of coin collectors/hoarders will be dumping them back into circulation.

 

I thought about this (Memorials, the new Wheaties) but the mintage numbers are very high, and only a few select dates will be desired. 1959, (first year), 1960 small date, perhaps the S mints from 1968-1974, 1982 small date Philly, some of the WAM's and CAM's.

 

I know it seems like they would last as long but money's only value is what people believe it to be worth. This is simply the nature of all money and always will be. Circulation of money is a complex interplay of a random walk and the aggregate beliefs of those who use it.

People believe pennies have no value so they are dropped and left. They are thrown in the trash. They are allowed to accumulate by the bucketsful in the home. Meanwhile there is the passage of time where houses burn down or flood and the pennies in circulation get dropped behind car seats. When the belief is that something has no value it is far more likely to end up where it is lost or destroyed.

While collectors still pull wheaties out of circulation and put them in safer places this isn't happening with memorials. Wheaties barely circulate at all because they are continually being separated out and then sitting for years. Memorials are being whittled away.

Of course the odds of memorials literally becoming scarcer than wheats is improbable because such trends can't last forever. Eventually some semblance of sanity will appear and pennies will be withdrawn. Most people won't bother to return their cents because they are worthless in any quantity so many memorials will survive. But there are still going to be a lot of specific dates that are tough because they are already tough. Even the survivors will continue to decrease in number at about 1% annually (higher initially) and the zincs will continue to rot away.

I believe the real key to the series will prove to be the 1984. This will be common in commercial "unc" but nice attractive specimens with good surfaces will be very scarce. Several other dates like the 1968 are already tough as well. People don't know because they are told the high mintages make them all common.

Every year about ten billion memorials are lost and another fifty million wheaties are lost. This 200 to 1 ratio is going to increase before it decreases.

 

Yes. Indeed!

Many of these will eventually be melted but enough will survive to assure a significant number of lightly circulated copper Lincoln memorials.

 

With most moderns the fewer minted the more that survive. Very few saved moderns but they mostly saved low mintages.