Making Heads or Tails of New Penny Design

The saying goes, "find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck."  Unfortunately it's not always true.  Case in point:  the last time I picked up a Penny, Lehman Brothers collapsed and ushered in The Great Recession.  To make matters worse it wasn't even a U.S. penny, it was Canadian.  (No offense, Canada, but I've been taught that Canadian currencly is always less valuable than its U.S. equivalent regardless of currency exchange rates.  Current USD/CAD rates from Google.)

I don't know exactly when in 2010 the new penny design first entered circulation.  ("US Mint Unveils New Penny Design for 2010," United States Mint.)  I first came across them on August 6.  At first I was intrigued by the novelty value of it.  The novelty value of new 2010 penny: slightly more than the cost of bending over to pick it up.  Plus it was soooooo shiny.

Can the blind identify the new pennies as pennies? Old design had the parallel lines of the Lincoln Memorial. Is the new design distinct enough from the dime by touch?  There's no confusing it with the dime because the dime has the serrated edge (as does the quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins).  Therefore, the only coin it could plausibly be confused with is the nickel.  The parallel lines (the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial) on the penny were a distinguishing characteristic between the penny and the nickel.  I decided to employ the scientific method:  I closed my eyes and held both a new penny and two different nickels (with two different designs) in one hand, trying to distinguish amongst them by touch alone.  I was able to tell that the nickel was larger, but if I didn't have both coins in hand to compare I don't know if I could have detected that difference by touch alone.

Jefferson in Profile

Jefferson - Portrait

The new penny is more easily distinguished from the old style nickel which has a portrait depiction of Jefferson.  On this nickel the face is very prominent and can be felt as a smooth rounded raised area against the background of the coin.  However, the newer nickel design featuring a portrait of Jefferson is flatter and more like the head side of the penny and harder to distinguish.

The new design reminds me of the Interstate Highway shields.  Sort of.

Supplemental Reading:  

A Short History of the One-Cent Coin, The United States Mint.

Bostwick, William, "New Penny Design Makes No Cents," February 18, 2010, Fast Company.