1920 Lincoln Wheat Pennies

The Roaring ‘20s started off with a healthy output of Lincoln Wheat Penny coins across all three Mints in 1920. And, while the 1920s would mark a decade of particularly high mintage figures for the Penny, it was a decade that still saw a few semi-keys and one major rarity. As for Lincoln Cents from the year 1920, the run included more than 400 million coins across all three operating Mints, with the Philadelphia Mint producing the lion’s share of coins during that year.

Three different Mints produced the 1920 Lincoln Wheat Penny: Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Each Mint placed "mintmarks" on the obverse (front) side of the Pennies just below the date on the lower right-hand side. The Denver Mint used a “D” and the San Francisco Mint used an "S". The main Mint in Philadelphia did not use a mintmark. All of these are considered common coins across the board, and are highly populous in all grades, but most especially circulated grades. The 1920 Philadelphia cent - of which 310,165,000 were struck - can be bought for as little as 10 to 20 cents in well-worn grades, and even in Brilliant Uncirculated can be had for less than $50.

As is the case with most pre-1933 Lincoln Pennies, the D and S Wheat Penny coins command more princely sums than their Philadelphia counterparts, and that is no exception in the case of the 1920-D and -S Pennies. In circulated grades, both the D and S Pennies (which saw mintages of 49,280,000 and 46,220,000, respectively) are priced between 15 and 50 cents in the lower circulated grades, but be prepared to shell out over $100 each for even baseline uncirculated pieces.