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Lot 1422
1909-S VDB ICG GRADED MS 67 RED. ICG graded MS-67 Red. A stunning example of this key date to the Lincoln Cent series. The color and surfaces are superb, full glowing mint luster with only a hint of fiery red and yellow toning around the periphery. As to the strike, it is bold, centered, complete. Similar on the reverse, blazing mint color, sharply impressed, and perfectly preserved. San Francisco ticked off 484,000 of this first year of issue Lincoln cent variety, before removing the designer's initials at the behest of newspaper accounts that the initials were too prominently placed.
Here lies an interesting story as noted in the Breen Encyclopedia: We owe the Lincoln design to a coincidence. The Lithuanian immigrant sculptor Victor David Brenner developed an obsession with the martyred President, and during the years just before Lincoln's birth centennial he modeled portrait medals and plaques. These came to the attention of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, and probably played a part in Brenner's winning a commission to portray him on the Panama Canal Service medal. During the sittings, Brenner became a close friend of Roosevelt. The President confided in Brenner about his "pet crime" (improving all our coin designs, favoring domestic artists above Mint Engraver Barber's mediocrity), and invited him to submit cent models.
Brenner's original cent reverse copied the then current French 2-franc piece. The moment that Mint Director Leach found this out, he used the fact as an excuse to reject the new design. Undaunted, Brenner brought the Mint Bureau a new reverse on February 17, 1909; this featured two stylized ears of durum wheat (the kind used today in making spaghetti). Brenner had signed his full name on the obverse model, but on Leach's orders he removed his signature, substituting V.D.B. at bottom reverse. Owing largely to pressure from the White House, this version was approved, and the new cents appeared on August 2, 1909. Newspaper attacks on the use of the initials promptly followed, and people hoarded the new coins as souvenirs, correctly expecting that later cents would drop the initials. An alternative proposal to substitute a modest B on truncation of shoulder was so strongly objected to by Barber, on grounds then obscure, that Brenner's signature in any form was dropped instead. (After all, Barber had been using an initial B on the truncation of his silver coins since 1892, and it would not do for anyone to mistake his designs for Brenner's and vice versa.) Brenner's initials were not restored until January 1918, a convenient few months after Barber's death; the remain there today, on lower edge of truncation.
Estimated Value $4,000 - 5,000.
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| Realized $6,325 |
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