The Lincoln Cent

On August 2nd, 1909 the new cent was released to the public.
This was the first ever U.S. coin that would be released that would contain a real person on the picture. As such, there was much controversy as some people felt that putting a real person on a coin was too similar to the European monarchies. Others felt that a man of Lincoln's importance belonged on a hire denomination coin than a penny. Mint employees were upset that a coin was designed by a mint outsider.

With all the controversy, the demand for the new penny only grew. On official release day, people stood in lines to get their first new penny and in many places the coins had to be rationed. The entire supply of cents was gone in 7 days. This initial release contained 27,996,194 1909 VDB and the now scare and key date Lincoln, the 1909 S VDB, that had a mintage of only 404,000. The supply ran dry because only after two days after the official release, on August 4, 1909, production was stopped by order of the Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeigh.

Although MacVeigh had earlier approved the design, he told reporters that he did not know that Brenner's initials were to appear on the coin and that he was only reacting to widespread public criticism. Many people objected to the size of the letters that Brenner had placed just above the rim on the reverse of the coin. Brenner was angry and threatened to sue as the initials and even full names of other designers had appeared on many previous coins, but there is no indication that he ever followed through on this threat. A suggestion was made to put just the initial