Grading Guide
A collector's reference to the Sheldon scale, grading technique, surface problems, and third-party authentication. Written for collectors who want to grade coins themselves and understand the reasons…
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Gobrecht Dollars
The silver dollar had been dormant since 1804 and the federal coinage was generally considered undistinguished. Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, who took office in 1835, set out to change both…
$3 Gold Indian Princess
The Act of February 21, 1853, which authorized the three-dollar gold piece, also reduced the weight of silver coins smaller than a dollar; the silver three-cent piece had been introduced separately…
Mercury Dimes
Mint officials in 1915 were operating under a misapprehension. They believed the Mint Act of 1890 required them to change coin designs at the 25-year mark; in fact the statute only authorized them to…
Draped Bust Half Dimes
The Flowing Hair design lasted barely a year on the dollar. For its replacement, by the traditional account, Mint Director Henry DeSaussure engaged Gilbert Stuart, the most celebrated portrait…
Lincoln Memorial Cents
On December 21, 1958, President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty issued a release announcing that the Lincoln cent would carry a new reverse beginning January 2, 1959. The fifty-year wheat…
Washington Quarters
The coin that eventually became the Washington quarter started as a proposal for a commemorative half dollar to mark the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth. Congress altered the plan:…
$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…
Washington Quarters (Statehood & Territories)
Public Law 105-124, signed December 1, 1997, authorized the United States Mint to issue five new quarter reverses per year from 1999 through 2008, one for each state, in the order each state ratified…
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, Flying…
Flowing Hair Half Dimes
The 1792 half disme struck in John Harper's cellar had demonstrated that the new republic could produce silver coinage. What it had not established was a functioning Mint operating from its own…
Indian Head Gold $2.5 Quarter Eagles
Every circulating United States coin before 1908 followed the same fundamental principle: the design elements stand in relief above a recessed field, so that the portrait, lettering, and devices take…