The WWII Penny Made of Glass: America’s Strangest Cent Pattern
In 1942, the United States Mint faced a wartime problem that reached all the way down to the humble cent.
Copper mattered more to the war than to pocket change. The metal went into ammunition, electrical equipment, and other military needs. Therefore, the Mint had to ask a question that still sounds strange today: What could replace copper in the one-cent coin?
The answer led to steel cents in 1943. However, before the Mint settled on zinc-coated steel, officials tested a remarkable list of materials. They tried metals, plastics, fiber, rubber, and even glass.
That last idea produced one of the most unusual pattern coins in American numismatics: the 1942 experimental glass cent.
A Wartime Search for a Copper Substitute
World War II changed American coinage almost overnight.
The five-cent piece lost its normal copper-nickel alloy during the war. From 1942 through 1945, the Mint struck Jefferson nickels in an alloy of 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese. Collectors know them today as wartime silver nickels.
The cent faced an even more urgent challenge. Copper stood high on the list of strategic war materials. As a result, the Mint explored substitutes for the common Lincoln cent.
In 1943, the Mint struck cents in zinc-coated steel. Those “steelies” became famous. They also became unpopular. They looked too much like dimes, they could rust, and vending machines could mistake them for steel slugs.
Yet the steel cent had one clear advantage. It worked well enough for mass production.
Glass did not.
Why Would the Mint Test Glass?
The glass cent did not begin as a novelty. It came from a serious wartime emergency.
The Mint invited private companies to help test substitute materials. Plastic manufacturers joined the effort. Button makers also tested cent-sized pieces. Meanwhile, the Blue Ridge Glass Company of Kingsport, Tennessee, asked for a chance to test glass.
The Mint supplied test dies. These dies did not carry the familiar Lincoln cent design. Instead, Mint Engraver John Sinnock prepared cent-sized experimental dies for outside testing.
Blue Ridge then obtained tempered glass blanks, also called preforms, from Corning Glass. These blanks had a yellow-amber transparent appearance.
From there, the company tried to turn hot glass into a coin.
The Design: Not Lincoln, But Liberty and a Wreath
The 1942 glass cent pattern uses a design that separates it from regular U.S. cents.
The obverse shows a Liberty head based on a Colombian two-centavo design. The experimental die also includes the words LIBERTY and JUSTICE.
The reverse carries a simple open wreath around the words UNITED STATES MINT. Modern references tied to Roger W. Burdette and NGC identify the wreath source as a 19th-century Anthony C. Paquet design. Some earlier auction text described the wreath differently, so the Paquet attribution now deserves the clearer mention.
The glass cent also has a plain edge.
How Blue Ridge Made the Glass Cent
Blue Ridge faced a problem that metal coiners never had to solve.
A coin press normally strikes metal planchets between steel dies. Metal can flow into the die cavities under pressure. Glass behaves differently. It can crack, chip, craze, or fail to take sharp detail.
For the glass test, Blue Ridge used hot glass and cold steel dies. Ideally, both the dies and glass needed heat near the proper glass-working temperature. Then the piece needed fast cooling to preserve the design.
However, Blue Ridge could not heat the dies. That single limitation hurt the entire experiment.
As a result, the glass cents show soft details. Their surfaces also show irregular flow patterns, tiny cracks, bubbles, and crazing. These features do not point to mishandling. Instead, they reveal how difficult the experiment was.
The blanks also ran slightly larger and thicker than a normal cent. Workers manually smoothed the edges. Therefore, weight and dimensions vary from piece to piece.
One documented intact example weighed about 1.52 grams. It measured about 19.85 millimeters in diameter and about 2.36 millimeters thick.
The Pocket Test That Glass Failed
The glass cent failed for a simple reason. It could not survive ordinary use.
Roger W. Burdette’s research records a telling test. Before Blue Ridge completed its work, company employees carried glass blanks in their pockets for a few days. The blanks chipped. Worse, they created sharp edges.
That detail gives the glass cent its unforgettable backstory.
This was not just a fragile pattern. It was a potential pocket hazard. A coin that chipped in a worker’s pocket could never succeed in national circulation.
By December 1942, the glass experiment had run out of time. The Mint needed a working solution for 1943. Zinc-coated steel won.
Glass moved into the history of American pattern coinage.
The 2016 Discovery That Rewrote the Story
For decades, collectors knew the Blue Ridge glass cent only from limited documentation and a broken survivor.
Then, in 2016, researcher Roger W. Burdette discovered an intact 1942 glass experimental cent. PCGS certified the piece as PR64. The certification identified it as Judd-2069, RB 42-70.
At that time, the discovery looked astonishing. Numismatists knew of one other glass cent, but that piece had broken in half. Therefore, the Burdette discovery stood as the only intact example then publicly known.
The coin had a transparent yellow-amber color. It also showed the expected soft details, glass flow, and microscopic cracking.
Collectors immediately understood its importance. The piece linked wartime urgency, Mint experimentation, private industry, and the limits of material science.
The Heritage Sale and the $70,500 Result
Heritage Auctions offered the intact glass cent in its January 2017 FUN U.S. Coins Signature Auction in Fort Lauderdale.
The lot carried powerful catalog language for good reason. At the time, Heritage described the coin as the sole unbroken piece known. The coin also carried a PR64 grade from PCGS.
On January 5, 2017, the glass cent sold for $70,500.
That result gave the experimental glass cent national attention. It also showed the market’s appetite for wartime pattern coins with a dramatic story.
However, the census did not stand still.
The Census Changed Later in 2017
In July 2017, NGC announced that it had certified 17 experimental glass cents and tokens from Blue Ridge Glass Corporation.
That group changed the known population.
It included nine glass pattern cents. Seven were intact, and two were fragments. All appeared on amber-colored glass blanks. NGC graded the intact pattern cents from MS62 to MS64. The fragments received attribution but no numerical grade.
NGC also certified eight glass tokens struck by Blue Ridge at the same time. Some tokens show the Blue Ridge Glass Corp. factory and the text BLUE RIDGE GLASS CORP. Others use simpler design elements. Most intact tokens graded between MS64 and MS66, while two token pieces survived only as fragments.
Therefore, modern writers should not call the glass cent “unique” without context. The 2016–2017 PCGS coin was the first intact example to emerge publicly after nearly 75 years. It was not the last intact piece identified.
That distinction matters.
Pattern, Token, or Coin?
Collectors often call these pieces “glass cents” or “glass pennies.” Those names work as shorthand. Still, these pieces never circulated as money.
The Judd-2069 glass cent belongs to the pattern and experimental series. It tested a possible emergency composition for the one-cent coin. It also used test dies rather than the regular Lincoln cent design.
The related Blue Ridge glass tokens occupy a connected category. They came from the same wartime experiment. However, they do not carry the same one-cent pattern design.
Both groups matter. Together, they document one of the strangest private-industry collaborations in U.S. Mint history.
Why Collectors Still Care
The glass cent pattern commands attention because it tells a story that a regular coin cannot tell.
It shows the pressure of World War II and how far the Mint would go to save strategic metals. It also shows why coinage must survive the real world.
A coin must stack. It must travel in pockets, pass through counting machines, resist normal wear and must also feel safe in the hand.
Glass failed those tests.
Yet that failure created the “wow factor.” The United States nearly had a penny you could see through. Then the experiment cracked, chipped, and disappeared into the pattern books.
Today, every surviving Blue Ridge glass cent carries that backstory.
How the Glass Cent Fits Into the 1942 Experimental Series
The glass cent did not stand alone.
In 1942, the Mint and private contractors tested bronze, brass, zinc, zinc-coated steel, manganese, white metal, aluminum, lead, rubber, fiber, plastic, Bakelite, and glass. The tests reflected the urgency of the moment.
Wrong-planchet wartime cents also form part of the broader story. A few 1943 and 1944 Lincoln cents exist struck on silver dime planchets. Those pieces are mint errors, not intentional glass experiments. Still, they show how unusual the wartime cent years became.
By contrast, the glass cent came from deliberate testing. It was an experiment by design.
A Fragile Survivor From a Hard Year
The 1942 glass cent pattern survives because the Mint and private industry tried almost everything.
The experiment failed. However, the failure teaches more than a success might have taught. It shows that a coin’s material matters as much as its design. It also shows that national emergencies can push the Mint far beyond normal practice.
The glass cent never jingled in American pockets. It never paid for a newspaper, a streetcar ride, or a piece of candy. Instead, it became a transparent relic of a moment when even the smallest coin had to serve the war effort.
For collectors, that makes the 1942 glass cent pattern one of the most remarkable “what if” coins in United States numismatics.
CoinWeek Notes
- Issue: 1942 Experimental Glass Cent Pattern
- Catalog Numbers: Judd-2069; RB 42-70
- Maker: Blue Ridge Glass Company / Blue Ridge Glass Corporation, Kingsport, Tennessee
- Glass Blanks: Corning Glass
- Composition: Tempered yellow-amber transparent glass
- Edge: Plain
- Design: Liberty head based on Colombian two-centavo obverse; open wreath reverse around UNITED STATES MINT
- Known Context: WWII emergency cent-composition experiments
- Major Sale: PCGS PR64 example sold by Heritage Auctions in January 2017 for $70,500
