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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Clinker, post: 656586, member: 6229&quot;]<p style="text-align: center"><font face="Arial"><b>RHYME OF THE AMERICAN CENT</b></font></p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">That large Cent, you know the Copper coin bearing Liberty,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">the one my grandpa had saved in a Mason jar for me,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">in 1857 became bronze and was shrunk to a smaller size</font></p><p><font face="Arial">featuring a golden eagle soaring the star-studded skies.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">In 1859 Longacre brought Miss Liberty back to the cent</font></p><p><font face="Arial">and in so doing, he set an important coinage precedent:</font></p><p><font face="Arial">not only did he design a new coin with Miss Liberty on it,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">he featured her wearing a native-American war bonnet.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">Fifty years later, President Roosevelt triumphed in his quest:</font></p><p><font face="Arial">the mint director, bullied, threatened and continually hard-pressed,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">struck Victor David Brenner&#039;s design of the new 1909 Cent</font></p><p><font face="Arial">to honor the 100th birthday of Lincoln, our sixteenth President.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">WW2 brought another change to the bright and shiney Cent in &#039;43</font></p><p><font face="Arial">as Copper was needed for the shells that would set the world free.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Soon after Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the bill and blotted the ink,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">the composition of the Cent was changed to a core of steel plated with zinc.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">In &#039;44 it became a bronze coin again which suited everyone just fine,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">with no more changes to the worthy Cent until the year &#039;59.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">To celebrate the long running fifty years of the noble One Cent</font></p><p><font face="Arial">the wheat heads on the reverse were replaced by the Lincoln Monument.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">The One Cent cost more than its face value to make, so, out of the blue,</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Congress mandated its composition be changed in the middle of &#039;82.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Since then, the new business strikes spilling into the finished coins&#039; hopper</font></p><p><font face="Arial">are composed of a core of zinc coated with a layer of copper.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">2009 celebrates Lincoln&#039;s 200th birthday and 100 years of the Cent, you know.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">The mint decided to keep the old Lincoln design on the obverse, and properly so.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Four new reverse designs were decreed (two already done, two still to come).</font></p><p><font face="Arial">Rolls of the first two designs of the new Cents are fetching a tidy sum.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">I own both P &amp; D circulation coins and two of the packaged proof sets</font></p><p><font face="Arial">and, like you, am waiting for the other two, but that&#039;s as good as it gets.</font></p><p><font face="Arial">If I had fifty rolls each of the four new reverse designs, I would happily</font></p><p><font face="Arial">trade all of them for one brilliant uncirculated 1909-S V.D.B.!</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Arial">Clinker (all rights reserved)</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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