Washington Quarters (American Women)
The obverse of every American Women Quarter carries a portrait of George Washington facing right, originally composed and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser in 1931 as her submission for the 1932…
Quarter Dollars
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Small Cents
Flying Eagle Cents
By the early 1850s the large copper cent was failing by every practical measure. The Mint was losing money on each one: one hundred cents cost more than a dollar in copper to produce. The coin…
Nickels
Shield Nickels
The Shield nickel did not arrive as an artistic triumph. It arrived as a solution to a crisis, designed under time pressure by an engraver who had been blocked from his preferred approach, hammered…
Half Dollars
Franklin Half Dollars
Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross had long wanted a Franklin coin and, after seeing Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock's portrait of the Founding Father on a 1933 medal, she asked him to prepare designs…
Quarter Dollars
Barber Quarters (Liberty Head)
Charles Barber designed the quarter, dime, and half dollar simultaneously in 1891 and 1892, producing a set of denominations that shared an obverse Liberty portrait while each denomination carried…
Two & Three Cents
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…
Quarter Dollars
Capped Bust Quarters
The Capped Bust quarter appeared in 1815 as the first quarter struck since 1807, repeating the denomination's established pattern of prolonged absences. The quarter had disappeared once before, from…
Small Cents
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…
Quarter Dollars
Twenty Cent Pieces
Nevada Senator John Percival Jones introduced the twenty-cent piece to Congress in 1874 on practical grounds: the Coinage Act of 1873 had abolished the silver trime, the half dime, and the standard…
Half Dimes
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…
Dimes
Seated Liberty Dimes
The Seated Liberty dime that appeared in 1837 carried a design that had been in development since at least 1835, when Mint Director Robert M. Patterson began pushing for a neoclassical replacement…
Small Cents
Lincoln Shield Cents
The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which mandated the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial cent program, also required that beginning in 2010 the cent's reverse bear an image emblematic of Lincoln's…