Coronet Head Large Cents (1816–1839)

Scot's Last Design, and What People Thought of It

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 since 1793 and was now in his early seventies. His Coronet Head portrait shows Liberty facing left, hair gathered in a bun secured by plain cords, additional tresses hanging to the neck, a coronet across the forehead with LIBERTY inscribed on it. Thirteen stars surround the portrait; date below. The reverse continued the wreath format, ONE CENT at center, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA around the border, no fraction. The Mint now had a steady supply of copper planchets from Boulton, and annual production figures would climb well past two million pieces in the better years of the series.

The design has fared badly with numismatic writers. Walter Breen called it spectacularly ugly. Sheldon remarked that Liberty resembled the head of an obese ward boss rather than a lady. The name "Matron Head," applied by Early American Coppers club members in the early 1970s and since adopted by the Red Book, reflects how unflattering modern collectors have found the portrait.¹ The alternate name "Coronet Head" references the headband and appears in the title of this article and in much of the specialist literature as the more neutral option. A third term, "Fillet Head," from the old word for a band worn in the hair, appears occasionally but has not achieved wide circulation. I have always used Coronet Head because it is the kinder name.

The Keg in Georgia and What Randall Did With It

The most consequential event in the collecting history of this series had nothing to do with the Mint. Shortly after the Civil War, a quantity of large cents dated 1816 through 1820 was discovered in Georgia, apparently stored in a keg that had been lost or forgotten for decades. The coins were uncirculated, though many carried carbon spotting from moisture. According to John Swan Randall, a Norwich numismatist writing in 1870, the coins reached William H. Chapman & Co., a dry-goods firm in Norwich, New York, which paid them out to customers in change. By then about fifty years had elapsed since their coining, and the large cent was no longer in circulation. The bright old coins were taken for fakes and nicknamed "Chapman's counterfeits," so the firm stopped paying them out. The firm eventually sold the remaining stock to Randall, who bought them at 90 cents a hundred and distributed them gradually to the collector market. The pieces remaining at his death were auctioned by Edward D. Cogan in 1878.²

The Randall Hoard is the reason nearly every Uncirculated Coronet cent dated 1816 through 1820 that exists in collector hands today survives at all. The 1818 and 1820 dates appear to have been most plentiful in the find; 1817 and 1819 were well represented. A collector willing to work at the Uncirculated level can acquire original bright copper examples of these five early dates with relative ease. Dates from 1821 onward had no comparable hoard, so their Mint State survivors exist as individual coins rather than in quantity, and several dates of the 1820s are scarce above Extremely Fine. The hoard created an asymmetry within a single design type that is still visible in population reports and auction results today.

Fifteen Stars and the Engraver Who Lost Count

The 1817 date presents one of the more memorable die errors in the series. One obverse die was prepared with fifteen stars rather than the standard thirteen. The engraver had spaced the first several stars too close together, found himself with room to spare as he worked around the circumference, and added enough additional stars to produce a balanced-looking arrangement that happened to include two more than intended. Uncirculated fifteen-star coins are far rarer than Uncirculated thirteen-star 1817s. Q. David Bowers wrote that in more than 60 years of looking he had never seen a fifteen-star 1817 with anything close to the original red mint color of the Mint State example he went on to buy at auction.³

The 1823: No Business Strikes Were Actually Made That Year

The 1823 date is the closest thing to a key date in the Coronet series, and its scarcity has an unusual explanation. The Mint's reports list no cents for the 1823 calendar year: the 1823-dated circulation coins were struck in 1824 from back-dated dies.⁴ Survivors are scarce in all grades, which is consistent with a limited production run regardless of when exactly it occurred. Unofficial restrikes of the 1823 exist, struck outside the Mint by the early 1860s from the broken original obverse die paired with a rusted 1813 reverse, and that reverse identifies them at once.

Several overdates appear through the series: the 1819/8, 1820/19, 1823/2, and 1824/2 being the most noted. The 1839/6 overdate is particularly interesting because the underlying 6 traces back to a die prepared in 1836, when a different hair-cord style was in use. The coin retains the plain cord style of the 1836 die on its obverse, whereas all other 1839 Coronet varieties use the later beaded cord version, so the plain cords are the key identifier of the 1839/6. The variety therefore combines two distinct design generations in a single coin, making it something more than a numerical overdate and one of the more numismatically unusual pieces in the entire series.⁵

Kneass's Stroke, Gobrecht's Modifications, and Two Unfortunate Names

Scot died in November 1823. His successor William Kneass maintained the Coronet design without significant change through 1834, then suffered a debilitating stroke on August 27, 1835, that paralyzed his right side; he remained Chief Engraver until his death in 1840. Christian Gobrecht, hired by the Mint as Second Engraver in September 1835 following the stroke and the designer of the Gobrecht dollar and the Liberty Seated coinage, took over die preparation. Between 1835 and 1836 he modified the obverse punch: Liberty's neck truncation became more pointed, the bust more compact, the overall appearance younger and more refined. The resulting coins, sometimes called the Modified Matron Head or Young Head, are distinct from the Scot originals on close inspection and collected as such by variety specialists.⁶

By 1839 the design was in active transition toward the Braided Hair type that would replace it, and four obverse varieties appeared in rapid succession. Two of them carry names that early numismatists assigned without concern for later sensibilities. The Silly Head presents Liberty with proportions that struck those first collectors as oddly rendered. The Booby Head, which followed, shows Liberty's hair curling downward and then back upward from beneath, creating an enlarged neck that earned the name, an old word for a fool. Both varieties are widely sought among collectors of the transitional 1839 issues, and the catalogs still list them by these names.

Building the Set

The Coronet cent is the most accessible of the large cent series for a date-set collector. No date constitutes an outright stopper in the manner of the 1799 or 1804 in the Draped Bust series. The 1821, 1823, and several 1820s issues are genuinely scarce in higher grades, but patient searching at realistic prices will produce results. The full run from 1816 through 1839 is achievable for a collector working within a moderate budget, particularly if the goal is circulated examples with honest surfaces rather than Uncirculated coins.

The Randall Hoard dates of 1816 through 1820 are the natural entry point for Uncirculated type collecting. Bright original brown and red-brown examples appear regularly in major auctions, and the supply is real. For the 1824 through 1835 segment, the situation is different in a way that population reports do not communicate on their own. These dates had no Randall Hoard. Nor is any comparable accumulation of them recorded. The Uncirculated coins that exist from these years survived individually rather than in bulk, which means they passed through more hands, absorbed more risk of cleaning and surface enhancement, and arrived at certification with a higher proportion of problems than the hoard dates. A population of fifteen certified Mint State 63 coins for a mid-1820s date does not mean fifteen problem-free coins exist at that grade; it means fifteen coins were submitted and passed a threshold that does not catch everything. Look at auction photographs carefully, read condition notes, and compare against the hoard-date coins you already know before deciding what an acceptable surface looks like for this segment.

Variety collectors entering the Newcomb numbering system will find material for a long time. Howard Newcomb's 1944 reference established the framework; Wright's Cent Book and Noyes's large cent references for the period provide modern updates. Some individual die marriages are exceptionally rare, including Proof-only varieties for certain dates and condition rarities where the population in any Uncirculated grade across all known examples can be counted on one hand. Outside the Randall Hoard dates of 1816 through 1820, full original red copper is very rare on Coronet cents. Most high-grade pieces present in brown or red-brown, and a full red coin dated 1821 or later should be treated as suspect until a specialist confirms the color is original.