Coronet Head Large Cents (1816–1839)

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

Large cent production resumed in December 1816 after the two-year wartime gap, and with it came a new design by Robert Scot, who had been Chief Engraver since 1793 and was now somewhere 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 improved machinery and sufficient copper, and annual production figures would climb well past two million pieces in the better years of the series.

What the design did not receive was favorable critical reception, either then or later. Walter Breen called it spectacularly ugly. Sheldon wrote 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 a critical consensus that has held for two centuries without serious dissent.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," referencing the ancient Greek word for headband, appears occasionally but has not achieved wide circulation. I have always used Coronet Head and will not pretend it is not the kinder choice.

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. They moved from a Georgia merchant to a New York wholesale dealer to a dry-goods merchant in Norwich, New York, who attempted to distribute them as customer premiums. By then forty-odd years had elapsed since their coining, and the cent was no longer in circulation. Many customers refused them. The merchant eventually sold the remaining stock to John Swan Randall, a Norwich numismatist, who bought them at ninety cents on the dollar and distributed them gradually to the collector market. The 2,116 pieces remaining at his death were auctioned with his estate 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 the 1820s onward, which had no comparable event, are genuine rarities above Extremely Fine and should be approached accordingly. 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. The fifteen-star variety was not represented in the Randall Hoard, so Uncirculated examples are far rarer than the thirteen-star 1817 despite being struck from the same year's production. Bowers noted in his Whitman guide that he had never encountered a fifteen-star 1817 cent with significant original mint brilliance.³ That is a strong statement from someone who handled early large cents at the highest market level for decades.

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. Bowers's research indicated that no business strikes were produced during the 1823 calendar year: all 1823-dated circulation coins were struck in 1824 from back-dated dies.⁴ Whatever the Mint's production records show for that year, the coins themselves postdate it. Survivors are scarce in all grades, which is consistent with a limited production run regardless of when exactly it occurred. Restrikes of the 1823 exist, identifiable by progressive die-break enlargement on the obverse that reflects the deteriorated state of the dies when the unauthorized strikings were made.

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 overlying 1839 die uses the later beaded cord version. 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 ended his active service. Christian Gobrecht, already at the Mint as Second Engraver 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, struck early in 1839, 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 the name, borrowed from the ungainly seabird, captures with more accuracy than elegance. Both varieties are widely sought among collectors of the transitional 1839 issues, and the names have stuck despite everything.

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. No comparable accumulation has surfaced for any of them. 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. Original red copper is extremely rare on any Coronet date. Most high-grade pieces present in brown or red-brown, and full original red should be examined with more skepticism than enthusiasm until proven genuine.