CU-1C-1945-01 Cud

Description

As the first cataloged cud for the 1945 Philadelphia Lincoln Wheat Cent, CU-1C-1945-01 opens the die break record for the final year of World War II. The 1945 cent continued the shell-casing brass composition introduced in 1944 — 95% copper and 5% zinc, with no tin — using melted-down ammunition casings that carried trace impurities from their military origin. Philadelphia struck approximately 1.04 billion cents that year, a massive production run that pushed working dies through hundreds of thousands of impressions each. When fatigue cracks at the die rim propagate to critical length, a section of the die face breaks free, and the resulting void produces a raised, blank mass on every coin struck afterward — the defining characteristic of a cud error. Unlike the 1943 steel cents that preceded this composition, the softer brass planchets absorbed striking energy more gracefully, reducing but not eliminating catastrophic die failures. Collectors pursuing wartime Lincoln cent errors value the 1945 date both for its WWII provenance and for the shell-casing alloy that distinguishes it from standard pre-war bronze. Documented by Cuds on Coins and cross-referenced as CU-1C-1945-01.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Bob Piazza
• CU-1C-1945-01
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References