Design proposals for the obverses of the 2026 Lincoln cent and Jefferson 5-cent coin to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial were recommended Feb. 15 by the Commission of Fine Arts.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee is expected to review proposed design modifications during its Feb. 27 teleconference.

The design modification for the minor coins in 2026 will not include any design revisions to the reverses.

CFA members favored modifications to both coin obverses to include date ranges to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary. The date range for the cent would be rendered with 1776 and 2026 stacked vertically in the field in front of Lincoln’s portrait, separated by a tilde.

About the tilde, a horizontal squiggly line, Wikipedia says, “In some languages (though not generally in English), a tilde or a tilde-like wave dash (Unicode: U+301C, ~ WAVE DASH) may be used as a punctuation mark (instead of an unspaced hyphen, en dash or em dash) between two numbers, to indicate a range. Doing so avoids the risk of confusion with subtraction or a hyphenated number (such as a part number or model number).”

For the 2026 Jefferson 5-cent coin obverse, the CFA preferred the same date range with tilde in the field in front of Jefferson’s portrait, just above where LIBERTY appears in script with the Mint mark below.

The CFA also considered proposed design modifications that incorporated a Liberty Bell privy mark with 250 appearing vertically within the bell. The privy mark was also incorporated in design suggestions with the date rendered as 2026. One proposed modification positioned the privy mark as the divider in place of the tilde in the dual date options.

All seven options for the two denominations will be reviewed by the CCAC.

Connect with Coin World:  
Sign up for our free eNewsletter
Access our Dealer Directory  
Like us on Facebook  
Follow us on X (Twitter)
Keep in touch on MyCollect - the social media platform for collectibles 

Whether you’re a current subscriber or new, you can take advantage of the best offers on magazine subscriptions available in digital, print or both! Whether you want your issue every week or every month, there’s a subscription to meet your needs.