I just read some fun stuff. Fun Time guides says there are about 35 known "zinc coated steel 1944 pennies" in existence. Over a billion pennies were produced in 1944. On the "copper" side, another site claimed only 40 1943 copper cents to be in existence. Now, PGS says there are roughly 10,000 to 15,000 of the 1955 doubled die in circulation of various grades. Looks like just under a billion 1955 pennies were made. I would have never guessed the odds of finding a 1955 DD are incredibly...actually astronomically better than finding a steel 1944 or copper 1943. In fact the odds are thousands of times better finding a 55 verses a 1943/44 wrong metal. ...yet I still run a magnet over every 44 I get lol.
Yet we will see about 15 billion (rough estimate) posts on here in the next year regarding both of these coins.
HA! another weird way of visualizing. ... a 5 gallon water jug holds about 37,500 pennies. Sooooo, fill 26,670 of those (roughly) and thats about a billion. Put 35 marked coins at random spread out over those 26,670 jugs and thats the odds for a 1943 copper. Even if you had all 26,670 jugs in front of you with those 35 painted bright red, it would take a lifetime to go through them. I find it fascinating! put the filled jugs side by side and it would reach over 8 miles! 84,480 pennies in a mile. 1 billion pennies laid out end to end is about 11,837 miles or just about a round trip from New York to Tokyo.
