Happy Birthday to the Rail Splitter!

There are more anniver­saries today than I orig­i­nal­ly real­ized. Thanks to @spacehobo for remind­ing me. Although we offi­cial­ly cel­e­brate «Pres­i­den­t’s Day» on this com­ing Mon­day, once upon a time cal­en­dars cel­e­brat­ed Wash­ing­ton’s and Lin­col­n’s birth­days sep­a­rate­ly and on the cor­rect days. Today, quite aus­pi­cious­ly, is the 200^th anniver­sary of Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s birth.

This means it’s also the 100^th anniver­sary of the Lin­coln Cent, which was designed and placed into cir­cu­la­tion to hon­or Lin­col­n’s 100^th birth­day. I have a mod­est col­lec­tion of them. I don’t quite have one of each, but I do have some key years. The rar­er and more expen­sive ones in my col­lec­tion tend to be pret­ty beat up; I think I’m doing pret­ty well if I can get my hands on a coin so worn the date is bare­ly read­able, if the alter­na­tive is blow­ing my rent mon­ey. I’ve paid over 300000% of face val­ue for some, which sounds like a lot more than it is.

Actu­al­ly, the 1909 cents weren’t released until August of 1909, but I sup­pose 100 years lat­er, what’s a cou­ple of months late for a birth­day gift? The Lin­coln cent was the first U.S. coin to bear the image of a real per­son. It’s now com­mon. I think the last time that a cir­cu­lat­ed coin had some­one oth­er than an actu­al per­son was 1976, when the reverse showed a colo­nial drum­mer. Even that still has Wash­ing­ton’s por­trait on the obverse. A cen­tu­ry ago, it was con­sid­ered con­trary to the Amer­i­can spir­it to deify our lead­ers by plac­ing them on cur­ren­cy. Lin­coln, how­ev­er, was so well-loved that an excep­tion was made, and soon enough every­one for­got how much it smacks of royalty.

Keep your eyes out. The 2009 cents will have four dif­fer­ent reverse designs, each depict­ing some part of Lin­col­n’s life. As I under­stand it, they will return to the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al reverse in 2010. I haven’t seen any of them yet, but I’ve been kind of busy. Of course, I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing them. I’m quite a fan of Mr Lin­col­n’s, so I’m hap­py to see him con­tin­ue to be honored.

(Yes, the one in the pho­to is a 1909 VDB. No, it’s not a San Fran­cis­co. But if you know what a «VDB» is, you already knew the one in the pho­to is a Philadelphia.)