Early Lincolns vs Modern Lincolns

Which design do you prefer more?

I prefer the early one because it seems to be made better and has higher relief.

I'll just put out there that the cutoff for classic/modern, in my opinion, is the same year that the Walking Liberty Half ended, in 1947.

 

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See, for us older guys, you gotta' be plainer...you mean shield vs memorial or vs wheat

 

Wheat ......

 

I would assume op means the wheats to be the classics.....

Regardless, wheats all the way. Especially the ones prior to 1920.

 

True, they just seem to be made so much better than the new pennies.

 

Actually for the designs, I enjoyed the "special" ones they issued in 2009.

 

Wheat!

With the exception of Lincoln on the Obv. that shield cent reminds me of a 3rd world country coin. Could never get my mind wrapped around that design. Hell, I don't even know what the shield represents! As an American collector, I should probably know that. I never bothered looking it up. It doesn't even look American to me. JMO.

 

Any of the cents up to 2009. The shield cents lost any kind of meaningful detail, especially on the obverse.

 

I liked all of the dead President issues up until they changed to low relief but bottom line, a well struck Lincoln Wheat can't be beat.

 

Flying eagle beats them all

 

Why this series lasted for two years is beyond me.

 

It was just too tough to strike well, too much eagle detail directly opposite features on the reverse which also needed deep strike there. That's why the eagle's head and tail are so often weak. Well-struck coins killed dies quickly, and the copper-nickel alloy didn't help. The move to smaller letters in 1858 - and shallower relief - was intended to help alleviate this problem but didn't do enough.

 

Kinda like the St. Gaudens $20 in 1907, but with that they managed to make it easy to strike by flattening it enough.

 

Part of good coin design is understanding the interplay between obverse and reverse designs, and how metal moves & fills features during the strike. You can plan for it somewhat, but you won't really know how it strikes up until you actually strike them. Lincoln Wheats had a big problem with this as well - note how often you see the upper left quadrant of the reverse weakly struck, directly opposite the lower left of the bust on the obverse. There just wasn't enough planchet metal available to fill all that area away from the center of the coin, that quickly.

Almost all coin designs can work if you strike them slowly enough. Not all work at production speeds.

 

Wheat

 

I agree that it's not a great rendition, but you do know where it came from, right? We're not going to get the actual original design back, and while I still think it could be improved on, it's a heck of a lot better than, say, the 2009's. Not so dear or honest ole Abe had become a laughable cartoon, even more than in real life, and was an insult to Brenner.

The OP question, as asked, is a little more complicated than pre/post 1947, which is an odd choice anyway. The obverse design alone has visibility changed many times over the years, so unless we want to break everything down, perhaps it would be easiest to simply identify by reverse variety. Even though not a personal fan of the series, I would choose wheat backs, and mostly because they include the obverse design used in the early years, which is far more eye-pleasing and superior to anything that came later imo.

 

Wheats! All you have to do is look at Lincoln. Nothing compares to 1915, 1916, and 1917 Abes!

 

I like the Memorial series best. It has produced the most interesting varieties and errors in Lincolns by far. It makes for a very interesting and collectible series. I also enjoy the fact that most collectors and dealers ignore and disregard the series. It permits generally low prices making the series affordable to all.

EDIT - I failed to vote because the poll is not setup correctly. I absolutely can't stand the shield cents! By far the worst design even, chosen by committee and most likely because of production concerns.

 

Nothing against memorials, ive looked through tons of them, but from a details standpoint....

...This is truth.

 

Great coins. What are the grades of those two?