Liberty Head Nickels (V)
By the early 1880s there was broad agreement that the Shield nickel had run its course. The design had been widely criticized since its introduction in 1866, its copper-nickel alloy continued to…
Nickels
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Half Dollars
Seated Liberty Half Dollars
Christian Gobrecht created the Liberty Seated motif for the pattern silver dollars of 1836 and 1838, and the design passed to the half dollar in 1839. Liberty sits facing left on a rock, her left…
U.S. Gold Coins
$3 Gold Indian Princess
The Act of February 21, 1853, which authorized the three-dollar gold piece, was passed in the same legislative session that introduced the silver three-cent piece and reduced the weight of silver…
Half Dimes
Seated Liberty Half Dimes
Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, who took office in September 1835, moved quickly to improve the silver coinage. He found the Capped Bust design insufficiently dignified for a maturing republic and…
U.S. Gold Coins
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…
Dollars
Flowing Hair Dollars
The Coinage Act of 1792 authorized a national mint and defined the dollar as the monetary standard of the new republic. Engraver Robert Scot, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson in November 1793…
U.S. Gold Coins
$4 Gold Stella
John A. Kasson, serving as United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Austria-Hungary in 1879, proposed a four-dollar gold coin whose weight, fineness, and value would place it…
Half Dimes
Bust (Original) Half Disme
The Constitution gave Congress the exclusive right to coin money, settling a question that had produced chaotic results under the Articles of Confederation. The conceptual architecture of the new…
Dimes
Barber Dimes (Liberty Head)
The Seated Liberty dime had been circulating since 1837 and attracting criticism for years before anything was done about it. By 1887, Mint Director James P. Kimball was noting in his annual reports…
Half Dollars
Capped Bust Half Dollars
John Reich joined the Philadelphia Mint as assistant engraver around 1807, and his Capped Bust portrait was struck on the half dollar before it appeared on any other denomination. Liberty faces left,…
Dimes
Draped Bust Dimes
The dime did not exist until 1796. Although the Coinage Act of 1792 had authorized a ten-cent piece as part of the decimal monetary system, and although the Mint had been producing copper cents and…
Two & Three Cents
Three-Cent Nickels
By the winter of 1864 to 1865, American commerce was running on improvised substitutes that nobody liked. Gold and silver had vanished from circulation years earlier. The copper-nickel cents and…