1940-P Lincoln Wheat Cent

Common date

A very high mintage Philadelphia issue and one of the most common wheat cents in any grade.

Mintage

Business strikes: 586,810,000
Mint: Philadelphia (no mintmark)
Mintage rank: 128 of 140
Proofs struck: 15,872

Rank 1 is the lowest business-strike mintage in the series. Mintage is what the Mint produced, not what survives. Cents circulated harder and longer than any other denomination, were spent rather than saved, and were melted and lost in numbers nobody recorded. On this series in particular, mintage is a poor guide to how hard a coin is to buy.

Scarcity tier

Common date

Assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 is a key date, under 2,500,000 is a semi-key.

This is a reproducible label derived from the mintage column, not a market valuation and not a Coin Curator price opinion. The same thresholds apply to every series on this site. Several dates are far harder or far easier to obtain than their mintage implies; where that is true, it is stated above.

Mintage explains less here than in any other series

Mintage explains less about this series than about almost any other. Cents were struck in enormous numbers, past a billion in several later years, so only the 1909-S VDB falls below the key-date threshold that applies across this site. The coins that are genuinely hard to buy well are hard for other reasons: the 1914-D because nobody saved it, the 1922 No D because it is a die state rather than an issue and is easily imitated, the 1943 bronze and 1955 Doubled Die because they are errors that were never part of any reported mintage. Read the notes on those dates rather than the tier column.

What to check before buying

1Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, not on the listing. A photograph of a label is not verification.
2Match the coin in the listing photographs to the coin described on the certification record, including the grade and any variety attribution.
3Look for cleaning: unnatural brightness, fine parallel hairlines in the fields, and a flat, lifeless surface under angled light.
4Check the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue. Added and altered mintmarks are the most common silver dollar alteration.
5Read the seller's return policy before bidding or buying, and confirm it covers authenticity and grade disputes.

Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and publishes no price or population data. These are verification steps, not a valuation. Read the grading guide.

Verify a certification number

If a 1940-Pis offered as certified, look the number up on the grading service’s own site and confirm the date, mintmark, grade, and any variety attribution match the listing. A photograph of a label proves nothing on its own.

PCGS cert lookup NGC cert lookup ANACS cert lookup

Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.

Find a 1940-P for sale

Opens an eBay search for this exact date and mint. Coin Curator does not list inventory, hold stock, or quote prices; verify each listing, seller, and return policy directly.

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Common questions

How many 1940-P Lincoln wheat cents were minted?

The Philadelphia Mint struck 586,810,000 1940-P Lincoln wheat cents for circulation. That is the 128th lowest business-strike mintage of the 140 date and mintmark combinations in the series.

Is the 1940-P Lincoln wheat cent a key date?

Coin Curator labels it a common date, assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 struck is a key date and under 2,500,000 is a semi-key. The same thresholds are used for every series on this site, so the tiers are comparable between them. That label describes production, not market value or how hard the coin is to find today. A very high mintage Philadelphia issue and one of the most common wheat cents in any grade.

What should I check before buying a 1940-P Lincoln wheat cent?

Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, match the listing photographs to the certification record, check for cleaning, and compare the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue.

Mintage sources

Mintage figures are U.S. Mint production records, cross-checked against the published tables below on 2026-08-01. Where those tables disagree, the disagreement is disclosed on the affected page rather than resolved silently.

LandOfCoins, Lincoln wheat cent mintage — Business strikes and proofs in separate columns. Used as the business-strike figures here.
Wikipedia, Lincoln cent mintage figures — A separate article from the main Lincoln cent page, which carries no table. Its Philadelphia figures for 1909-1915 add that year's matte proofs into the business-strike total.
USA Coin Book, Lincoln wheat cent — Consulted to break disagreements. Rounds the 1953 and 1954 figures to the nearest million, so it is a tiebreaker rather than a primary source.

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