1891 Canadian Penny
The 1891 Canadian Penny is a one-cent coin struck for circulation with 1.45 million made. Value band: small premium. Here is how to recognize it, what makes one worth more and what to check on yours.
- Year
- 1891
- Circulation mintage
- 1,452,000
- Value band
- Small premium
- Composition
- Bronze (95.5% copper, 3% tin, 1.5% zinc)
Original illustration of the coin's shape and metal. Tap to flip. Not a picture of the actual design.
Face value · Small premium · Collector premium · Significant rarity. We use bands because prices change daily.
What is an 1891 Canadian Penny worth?
A large cent from 1891 is old enough that collectors want it in any condition. Worn, dark coins bring a small premium; coins with clear detail in the hair and leaves bring much more. Any with original red color are in a class of their own.
What would make yours worth more:
- Original red color rather than brown
- Sharp detail in the portrait and leaves
- A recognized variety for the date
- Professional grading for a key date
For market prices, look at recent sold results for the same coin in the same condition, not asking prices.
Quick answers
- Is the 1891 Canadian Penny rare?
- It is scarcer than most Canadian pennies. Collectors pay a small premium for good examples.
- How many 1891 Canadian pennies were made?
- 1,452,000 were struck for circulation.
- What is the 1891 Canadian Penny made of?
- Bronze (95.5% copper, 3% tin, 1.5% zinc). It weighs 5.67 g and measures 25.4 mm.
- Is the 1891 Canadian Penny still legal tender?
- Yes. The Royal Canadian Mint stopped distributing cents in 2013, but they remain legal tender. Cash payments are rounded to the nearest five cents, so most pennies now sit in jars or go to banks.
The 1891 penny in context
The 1891 cent was struck at the Royal Mint in London, the first London cent since 1888, with a published mintage of 1,452,000. That is a modest figure for a Victorian cent, but what really brings collectors to this date is the variety of its dies. The mint used reverse dies with a large date and with a small date and the small date coins also come with two sizes of maple leaves in the border.
The result is three recognized versions: large date, small date with large leaves and small date with small leaves. All three share one published mintage, so nobody knows exactly how many of each were made. The small date coins are all much scarcer than the large date, which makes up most of what turns up. Collectors who build a full Victorian set by variety need all three. For anyone else, an 1891 is a nice scarcer date with an extra puzzle attached. It is worth pulling out a magnifier on any 1891 you find, because sorting it costs nothing and takes only a minute once you know what to look for.
How to recognize it
The obverse is the standard Victorian Dominion design: the queen wearing a diadem, framed by VICTORIA DEI GRATIA REGINA CANADA. The reverse shows ONE CENT and 1891 inside a beaded circle with a maple vine around the rim and there is no mint mark. To sort the varieties, start with the date: the large date digits are visibly bigger, which is easy to see once you have a reference coin or a clear photo beside yours. On small date coins, move on to the maple leaves in the vine and compare their size with reference photos of both leaf types. Judging leaf size from memory rarely works, so take the time to line the pictures up.
1891 Canadian Penny by the numbers
By the numbers, the 1891 Canadian Penny ranks 12th lowest of 151 Canadian cent dates and varieties from 1858 to 2012. The next scarcer is the 1922 Canadian Penny (1.24 million); the next more common is the 1886 Canadian Penny (1.5 million).
For scale, the most common is the 1981 Round Canadian Penny with 1.21 billion, about 833 times as many. The scarcest is the 1858 Canadian Penny with 421,000, 3.4 times fewer than this one.
Compared with the dates around it, the 1891 output was 1.5 times the 1890 figure and 1.2 times the 1892 figure.
Over the 1890s the Mint produced 14.8 million cents across 10 dates and varieties; the 1891 Canadian Penny accounts for 9.8% of that.
What to check on your 1891 Canadian Penny
- Check the color. Collectors describe copper cents as red, red-brown or brown; original red color is worth far more than toned or dull surfaces.
- Never clean it. Rubbing, polishing or dipping leaves fine scratches and an unnatural color that collectors spot at once.
- Look at the high points of the portrait and the lettering. Wear there sets the grade. The grade in turn drives the value of older cents.
At 1,452,000, the 1891 sits in the lower half of Victorian mintages, so any 1891 draws a small premium even when worn and sharp ones earn more. The varieties change things. A coin confirmed as either small date version draws a collector premium well above a large date coin in the same grade. Wear can make leaf size hard to judge, so varieties are best attributed on coins with clear borders. If you think you have a small date coin, it is worth having it checked by an experienced dealer or a grading service, which will record the variety on the holder.
Victoria large cents of the Dominion, 1876 to 1901
Confederation in 1867 created the Dominion of Canada, but it took nine more years before the new country needed cents of its own, because the province's 1859 stock was still being paid out. The first Dominion cents are dated 1876. They kept the 25.4 mm size and the familiar reverse of ONE CENT and the date in a beaded circle surrounded by a maple vine, but the coin got heavier: 5.67 g, one eightieth of a pound. Victoria now appears older, wearing a diadem, with the legend VICTORIA DEI GRATIA REGINA CANADA.
Canada still had no mint, so the cents came from England. The Royal Mint in London struck most years, while the private Heaton mint in Birmingham handled several orders and marked them with a small H below the date. The H years are 1876, 1881, 1882, 1890, 1898 and 1900 and 1900 was struck at both mints. Production was irregular. There are no cents dated 1877 to 1880, 1883, 1885 or 1889 and yearly mintages swing between one million and about four million.
Start by reading the date and checking for the H, because that pairing identifies the issue. The lowest mintages of the reign are the one million coin years: 1890-H, 1894, 1898-H and 1900 without an H. Those draw a collector premium even when worn. The four million dates such as 1876-H, 1882-H and 1888 are the easiest to find. These coins circulated for decades, so most are smooth. Sharp leaf veins, visible strands of hair and natural brown or red color are what separate a collector's coin from an ordinary one.
Mintage chart
Specifications
| Country | Canada |
|---|---|
| Denomination | 1 cent |
| Issuer | Royal Canadian Mint |
| Year | 1891 |
| Circulation mintage | 1,452,000 |
| Composition | Bronze (95.5% copper, 3% tin, 1.5% zinc) |
| Weight | 5.67 g |
| Diameter | 25.4 mm |
| Shape | Round |
| Edge | Plain |
Frequently asked questions
What are the 1891 Canadian cent varieties?
There are three: large date, small date with large leaves and small date with small leaves. They differ in the size of the date digits and the maple leaves on the reverse vine and both small date versions are much scarcer than the large date.
Does the 1891 cent have a mint mark?
No. The 1891 cents were struck at the Royal Mint in London, which did not use a mint mark on Canadian coins. Only the Heaton mint in Birmingham added a letter, the H seen on dates such as 1890 and 1898.
Mintage figures: Penny (Canadian coin) (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0), compiled from Royal Canadian Mint figures. How we build these pages.