Braided Hair Half Cents
By 1840 the Philadelphia Mint still held substantial stocks of Classic Head half cents struck in the 1830s and had no pressing reason to produce more coins for commerce. The denomination had not…
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Lincoln Wheat Cents
The tradition of placing allegorical figures on American coins rather than real people had held since the republic's founding. Putting a leader's portrait on money was understood as a monarchical…
American Innovation Dollars
Public Law 115-197, the Innovation $1 Coin Act, was signed July 20, 2018, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to mint dollar coins honoring significant innovations and pioneering efforts from…
Three-Cent Silvers (Trimes)
The California Gold Rush created a silver shortage by an indirect route. The enormous quantities of gold extracted after 1848 depressed its price relative to silver. Silver, suddenly the dearer…
Classic Head Gold $5 Half Eagles
The Act of June 28, 1834 reduced the gold content of the half eagle from 8.75 grams at .9167 fineness to 8.36 grams at .8992 fineness, eliminating the bullion arbitrage that had sent nearly every…
Capped Bust Gold $2.5 Quarter Eagles
Every quarter eagle minted between 1808 and 1834 was produced under the same monetary constraint: the statutory 15-to-1 silver-to-gold ratio set by Congress in 1792 undervalued gold relative to…
Braided Hair Large Cents
Christian Gobrecht had spent 1839 working through two transitional varieties, the Silly Head and the Booby Head, that represented failed attempts to modernize the Coronet portrait before he arrived…
Jefferson Nickels
In January 1938, the Mint announced an open competition for the nickel's new design, specifying that entries must feature Thomas Jefferson on the obverse and his home, Monticello, on the reverse,…
Standing Liberty Quarters
When Mint Director Robert W. Woolley invited three sculptors to submit designs for the quarter in 1915 and 1916, he was responding to the same broad campaign for coinage reform that had produced…
Draped Bust Dollars
When Henry William DeSaussure became Mint Director in July 1795, one of his declared goals was raising the artistic quality of the coinage. He engaged portraitist Gilbert Stuart to prepare a new…
Liberty Cap Large Cents
Joseph Wright prepared the Liberty Cap cent dies in the summer of 1793 and died of yellow fever around September 12 or 13. The 11,056 pieces of the 1793 Liberty Cap cent were delivered to the Mint…
Indian Head Gold $5 Half Eagles
Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a Boston physician and art collector and one of President Theodore Roosevelt's close friends, had observed the incuse relief of ancient Egyptian carvings at the Boston…