An attractive original Uncirculated example of this famous Key date. A soft orange Brown with some remaining original planchet color around the rims, and no significant marks. I will note that CAC does not generally like “Brown” Bronze and Copper coinage, so the percentage of Uncirculated BN coins that will sticker is relatively small. In this case, the total PCGS/NGC population is about 1,100 coins in the grade, with less than 100 CAC’d. If you wish to read further, more on this coin’s history is shown below.

PCGS 2426.63/35695404

This date has never been really “rare” in the absolute sense, but was popularized due to the inability of the majority of collectors to find one in circulation. The answer is simple: probably 90% of the active collectors during the 1940’s-60’s period were located East of the Mississippi, just due to the population distribution in the U. S. at the time, and the coins that reached circulation had largely been hoarded by the general public along the West Coast, where they were actually distributed. San Francisco Mint production was meant specifically for the Western states, and there was far less demand for “small change” in the “Cowboy” states east of California, so not many coins wandered over the Sierra Nevada range. There was a time when I was in Oregon that you could attend a coin show and locate as many Circulated examples of this date as you wished, or your wallet could handle. Uncirculated coins are of course far fewer, however a perhaps larger than typical percentage of the Mintage has been certified, with PCGS and NGC accounting for 2.5%+ of those struck alone. This reflects concerns about authenticity and of course the value of the date in Unc, but does show that a larger than average number of coins in Unc were put aside at the time.