Sizes Matter

The 1960 Small Date Cent Had a Large Impact on the Hobby

- Tom DeLorey

About the time that I started collecting coins, around 1960, the U.S. coin market was mesmerized by the concept of collecting and/or hoarding original BU rolls of coins. Being a child of limited means, content with filling Whitman folders, I was not affected personally at the time, but it affected the coin collecting universe greatly, and eventually my life.

I was too young to appreciate the peculiar chain of events that led to the striking of the epicenter of this madness: the 1960-P Small Date cent, which is apparently the lowest-mintage regular-issue U.S. coin since the 1938-D half dollar. Even today, most collectors have no idea why it had an (unofficial) mintage of only 2,075,000 pieces, a mere pittance that the current Philadelphia Mint can turn out in less than an hour. I think I just figured it out.

For many decades before 1960, it was traditional for established coin dealers to put away a roll or two of each new issue for inventory purposes to meet the demand for future single coin sales. Thanks to this practice, the hobby today has many surviving examples of most modern-date coins in Choice BU condition—though, of course, the rolls did not survive as rolls since they were broken up for the single coin sales.

(I have always assumed that certain collectible varieties that involve badly degraded dies such as the 1922 “No-D” cents and the 1937-D “3-Legged” nickels are rare in true Uncirculated condition because the dealers putting away the rolls would have looked at a roll containing such “defective” coins and dumped them back into circulation, finding another roll of well-struck coins for inventory to keep their customers happy.)