Maybe a little practical advice to use early in your Lincoln cent collecting: take care to learn (you may have already, but if you haven't yet)...take care to learn the look of an original 1943 steel cent in Uncirculated or Almost Uncirculated condition.
Many "processed" or "reprocessed" steel cents exist, and I have seen some sad mistakes in cent collections where the 1943 coins were these re-plated "processed/reprocessed" things.
The difference is not difficult to discern after you've looked at several examples of each. The originals will be somewhat aluminum in appearance, while the "processed" cents will have a more chromium appearance.
Another easy way to help tell the difference is that the originals have much better detail in the portrait (because the original zinc plating was so thin), while the "processed" cents were often coins that had seen considerable circulation before they were "re-manufactured<" and that wear, together with the thicker plating typical of the "processed" coins causes them to have portraits with much less detail.
Anyway, it's worth learning, because I've seen some pretty decent Lincoln sets that were ruined by the inclusion of "processed" steel cents.
One final note about the '43 steel cents. (Again, you probably know this already, but for others, who are new to Lincoln cents...) the 1943 steel cents were a wartime expedient, but an unsuccessful one that lasted only the single year (see the 1944 Belgian 2-franc for the use of the extra planchets). I read years ago that the reason they were withdrawn was because so many people confused them with dimes (10-cent coins). I had difficulty believing that, as naturally I would, having seen them mostly as tired, dark and rusty survivors still circulating in the mid-'60s. Then one day I thought to ask my grandma about them--she had worked a gas station when the 1943 steel cents entered circulation.
Anyway, when I asked her about the '43 steel cents, my mild old granny immediately flew mad--and she was a woman I almost never saw angry--it was decades later, and she still was unhappy about the several 9-cent mistakes the new coins caused her. (With 5 kids in the wartime 1940s, 9 cents weren't something to just give away.)
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