1943-S Lincoln Wheat Cent

1943 is the most famous year in Lincoln cent history. With copper urgently needed for shell casings and wiring during World War II, the U.S. Mint switched cent production for that one year to zinc-coated steel - the so-called "steelies." The few 1943 cents accidentally struck on leftover bronze planchets are some of the most valuable U.S. coins ever made.

This piece is the opposite kind of wartime mistake, and arguably an even more interesting one. It is a 1943-S obverse Lincoln cent die paired with a Wheat reverse, struck not on a steel cent planchet but on a silver Mercury dime planchet (90% silver) that had been left in the press hopper at the San Francisco Mint. The dime blank is smaller and lighter than a cent, so the design is incompletely impressed and the strike is roughly 5% off-center, with broad blank crescents at the rim where the small silver disk failed to fill the cent collar.

PCGS certified the coin as a genuine wrong-planchet error in AU Detail, with a "DMG" designation noting a fake clip - a small post-mint alteration where someone tried to make the natural off-center / undersized appearance look like a curved clip planchet error. PCGS catches this kind of thing constantly: a real wrong-planchet error of this magnitude is dramatic enough on its own and does not need any "help."

Wrong-planchet errors from 1943 San Francisco are legitimately rare. The combination of a wartime steel-cent year, a silver Mercury dime planchet, and an off-center strike makes this one of the more memorable U.S. error coins to come across the bench.