1874

Philadelphia struck 790,000 three-cent nickels in 1874, the depression from the previous September's panic still gripping the economy. Jay Cooke's banking house had failed on September 18, 1873, triggering a cascade of bank collapses that shut down the New York Stock Exchange for ten days. By 1874, unemployment was spreading, wages were falling, and demand for new coinage across every denomination had slackened. The three-cent nickel, already a marginal denomination by 1873, had little reason to expand its production. The 1874 circulates in the middle range of scarcity for the series, more common than the true keys of the 1880s but clearly less abundant than the big post-war mintages.