It takes a lot of bricks to build a house.

The period from 1909 to 1933 is referred to by many as "The Early Years." It was the launching pad for what was to become the longest running series of United States coinage ever. The Lincoln cent was the first U.S. coin issued for commerce with the likeness of a real person, President Abraham Lincoln. It was designed by noted sculptor and medal designer Victor David Brenner, and was commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.

Issued to commemorate the centennial of Lincoln's birth, the Lincoln cent was contested from its inception by legislators, press, and the public. Representative John Page of Virginia protested that busts of famous people were already everywhere, and when speaking of the likeness of Lincoln on the cent stated, "A further compliment they need not pay him."

A firestorm of debate over the designer's initials on the reverse of the new cent clouded the excitement over its release and caused mass hysteria among those trying to profit from the event. Press coverage was thick over the release of the new coin during the first week of August 1909, and rose to the level we would now expect of events such as the moon landing. Although changed slightly in its first week after initial release, the Lincoln cent survived this storm and went on to become the model for future coinage changes.

As with most other coin series of the time, many of the Lincoln cents from this period were circulated because of hard times. Both World War I and the Great Depression hindered coin collecting for aesthetic reasons and shoved coins into the hands of commerce where the vast majority were heavily circulated. The lack of higher grade coins from this time period has stunted the growth of knowledge in the area of micronumismatics, or the study of coins through magnification.

Although much is known about this era of the Lincoln cent, there is still much more to learn. Study your coins carefully — you may be the one to discover a new key.

From the introduction of the Lincoln cent to 1934, the United States experienced World War I, a dust bowl, the Great Depression, and the administration of seven U.S. presidents. While many nations' coins went through nearly half a dozen changes per denomination, the lowly Lincoln cent was just getting started.

1934 marks the beginning of a new era in cent production. Up to that point, the U.S. Mint had produced just over 4 billion cents in 25 years — a mark that would only take another nine years to double. With the exception of 1934, production levels of cents in the new era never dropped to pre-1934 levels and, except in a handful of cases, steadily increased each year.

Large-scale hoarding began because of the newfound abundance of coins. By the end modern wheat cents era, economic prosperity, brought on by victory in World War II, allowed anyone who wanted to save cents the ability to do so. Tens of thousands of bags worth of mint-fresh cents were saved during this period, creating an abundance of shiny red mint state cents that is still extant today.

Over 21 billion cents were minted in the era of the modern wheat cent, yet more unique rarities were minted in the 25 years it encompasses than in any other era of the Lincoln cent. It was during this era that collectors began to realize there was more to the rarity of a coin than the number minted. The discovery of 1955 cents exhibiting doubled designs marked the beginning of a sub-variety of numismatists who studied each coin closely and cataloged those that were anomalous.

Although the "error and variety" market is stronger today than it has ever been, we owe its beginning to the Lincoln cent and the era of the modern wheat cent.

In 1909 Abraham Lincoln's bust first appeared on the cent obverse to commemorate his 100th birthday. From that time to 1959, another half century passed. Americans had grown accustomed to their Lincoln cents with the wheat stalks on the reverse, but in January 1959, that era in our coinage was to be written and sealed in history.

On December 20, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized a change of the Lincoln cent reverse to one designed by Assistant Engraver Frank Gasparro. This left just enough time to prepare the dies and have them ready to commence striking on the second day of January, two short weeks later.

The new reverse design, perhaps inspired by Jefferson's memorial introduced twenty years earlier on the nickel's reverse, was to bear the likeness of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The design was clean and fresh, bearing all the same lettering as the wheat reverse cent, yet in different positions and with a different letter style.

Since 1959, more memorial reverse cents have been minted than all other cent types in the history of our nation. In fact, over 400 billion Lincoln memorial cents have been minted, more than any other single coin design in world history.

By 2009, we celebrated the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth with four special reverse designs commemorating distinct periods of his life. This marked the definitive end of the Memorial cent in 2008, as U.S. coinage moved forward into new eras without ever returning to that design.

The Lincoln cent turned 100 years old in 2009, timed to the bicentennial of President Abraham Lincoln's birth. Rather than mark the occasion with a single commemorative reverse, the Mint issued four one-year designs that walked through his life in sequence: Birth and Childhood, Formative Years, Professional Life, and Presidency. Each reverse was available only in 2009, giving collectors a short, self-contained chapter that stood apart from both the Memorial era behind it and the long-running design that followed.

In 2010 the Union Shield reverse took its place. Clean, heraldic, and built for modern production, the Shield cent became the everyday face of the denomination for the next decade and a half. Billions of pieces entered circulation under that design, and for many newer collectors the Shield reverse is simply "the" Lincoln cent — the coin they first learned to recognize in change.

That long run closed with the end of the circulating cent in 2025. The Shield design had carried the series through its final years of regular issue, tying the ultra-modern period to a clear finish line rather than an open-ended continuation. Almost immediately, though, the story gained one more chapter: in 2026 the Mint struck special Semiquinquennial cents for the 250th anniversary of the United States. Those pieces retain the Shield reverse, linking the commemorative year back to the design that defined the last era of circulating Lincoln cents.

Taken together, the ultra-modern years are brief in calendar span but dense in change — four bicentennial reverses, a durable Shield type, the close of circulating production, and a national anniversary issue that still wears the Shield. Study them as one arc: celebration, standardization, farewell, and remembrance.