Coronet Head Large Cents
Cent coinage resumed in the winter of 1815 to 1816, once a shipment of Boulton planchets ended the wartime shortage, and later in 1816 came a new design by Robert Scot, who had been Chief Engraver…
All articles
85 articles · newest first · page 4 of 8
Indian Head Gold $10 Eagles
President Theodore Roosevelt's collaboration with Augustus Saint-Gaudens began around 1904 and called for redesigning the four denominations of gold coinage. Saint-Gaudens had originally developed…
Seated Liberty Half Dollars
Christian Gobrecht engraved the Liberty Seated motif, from a sketch by Thomas Sully, for the silver dollars of 1836 and 1838, and the design passed to the half dollar in 1839. Liberty sits facing…
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…
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…
Roosevelt Dimes
Franklin D. Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945, at age 63, after twelve years as the 32nd President of the United States. A tenure that spanned the Great Depression, the New…
Peace Dollars
By late 1921 numismatists who had campaigned since 1918 for a coin commemorating the armistice had persuaded the Treasury Department to act. Rather than producing a half dollar as originally…
Flowing Hair Half Dollars
Every Flowing Hair half dollar carries its value in lettering on the edge: FIFTY CENTS OR HALF A DOLLAR, an inscription the Mint kept on the half dollar until the lettered edge was dropped in 1836.…
Capped Bust Gold $5 Half Eagles
When John Reich joined the Mint as Assistant Engraver in April 1807, Mint Director Robert Patterson set him to redesigning the coinage, and his Capped Bust portrait appeared on the half eagle later…
Flowing Hair Large Cents
The Philadelphia Mint struck its first large cent on February 27, 1793. By the end of that same year it had abandoned two designs, introduced a third, and produced six distinct varieties across two…
Draped Bust Large Cents
The Draped Bust large cent arrived in late 1796 as part of a deliberate effort to bring visual consistency across American coinage. The Mint had been running different portraits on different…
Draped Bust Gold $10 Eagles
Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report on establishing the Mint proposed a ten-dollar gold piece as the highest denomination of the new federal coinage, though Hamilton himself found the name something…