For one year the cent surrendered its copper to the war and was struck in zinc-coated steel, the only American circulation coin a magnet will pick up. The three mints made over a billion of them, 684,628,670 at Philadelphia alone, which is why the most famous wrong belief in the hobby, that a 1943 steel cent is rare, is wrong by roughly a billion coins.
The rarities of 1943 are the coins that disobeyed the metal: a handful of bronze planchets left over from 1942 were struck with 1943 dies, and the census of genuine 1943 bronze cents runs from about two dozen to about forty depending on who is counting, with the single known Denver example selling for 840,000 dollars in 2021. The next year produced the mirror error, 1944 cents on leftover steel planchets, roughly three dozen known across the mints. The register records the metal boundary; the strays that crossed it are the most valuable cents in existence.
Both directions of fraud exist: copper-plated steel 1943 cents sold as bronze, and altered 1948 dates posing as 1943. A magnet settles the first instantly, and the long-tailed 3 of the genuine 1943 date settles most of the second.
| Issue | Mint | Mintage |
|---|---|---|
| 1943 Lincoln Wheat Cent | Philadelphia | 684,628,670 |
| 1943-S Lincoln Wheat Cent | San Francisco | 191,550,000 |
| 1943-D Lincoln Wheat Cent | Denver | 217,660,000 |
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.