The most famous mintage figure in American collecting exists because of an argument about typography. Victor David Brenner signed his Lincoln design with his initials on the reverse, the coin was released in August 1909 to enormous public demand, and within days the initials had become a controversy loud enough to stop production at every mint while the letters were removed. Philadelphia had already struck nearly twenty-eight million VDB cents. San Francisco had struck 484,000. The halt froze that number in place, and no circulation coin of the series has ever carried a smaller one.
The aftermath has its own chapter in the register: the plain 1909 and the 1909-S were both created by the removal, and the initials themselves returned in 1918, cut in miniature into the truncation of Lincoln's shoulder, where they remain on every cent struck since. The coin the argument created has been the key to the most collected series in the country for over a century.
No American coin attracts more counterfeiting effort: added S mintmarks on plain 1909 VDB cents and wholesale fakes both circulate constantly. The genuine mintmark's size, position and serif shapes are documented in detail, and on a coin this famous the documentation, not the seller, is the authority.
| Issue | Mint | Mintage |
|---|---|---|
| 1909 Lincoln Wheat Cent | Philadelphia | 72,702,618 |
| 1909 Lincoln Wheat Cent (VDB) | Philadelphia | 27,995,000 |
| 1909-S Lincoln Wheat Cent | San Francisco | 1,825,000 |
| 1909-S Lincoln Wheat Cent (VDB) | San Francisco | 484,000 |
Mintage figures: United States Mint (Annual Report of the Director of the Mint), Royal Canadian Mint records, and — for the 1935 banknote issue — Bank of Canada printage records as published in the Charlton Standard Catalogue of Canadian Government Paper Money, cross-checked across independent published references. Specifications: United States Mint coin specifications.