Draped Bust Large Cents (1796–1807)

Scot Applied an Existing Portrait to a New Denomination

The Draped Bust large cent arrived in November 1796 as part of a deliberate effort to bring visual consistency across American coinage. The Mint had been running different portraits on different denominations since production began, and by 1795 the decision had been made to standardize. The Draped Bust portrait had appeared first on the silver dollar that October; by the time it reached the cent it had already been placed on half dimes, dimes, quarters, and half dollars. Chief Engraver Robert Scot executed the dies. The Liberty Cap and pole that had defined the cent since Wright's 1793 design was retired without comment.

The portrait's origins are traditionally attributed to Gilbert Stuart, whose sketches provided the model that Philadelphia artist John Eckstein translated into bas-relief plaster models for Scot to work from. No documentary evidence has surfaced to confirm Stuart's direct involvement; the attribution rests on later accounts rather than contemporary Mint records and should be treated as traditional rather than established.¹ What is not in question is the portrait itself: Liberty in right profile, flowing hair with a ribbon behind her head, classical drapery at the neckline, more composed in character than the experimental designs of the cent's first three years.

The reverse retained the wreath format from the Liberty Cap series. Three wreath reverse types had accumulated from earlier production, and all three appeared on 1796-dated cents. Two of them, known as the Type of 1795 and Type of 1797, were used together again on 1797 cents. From 1797 onward a single reverse style continued through the end of the series in 1807.

Goodhue's Daughters and the Nichols Hoard

Most Mint State examples of the 1796 and 1797 Draped Bust cents that appear in the market today trace to a single source. Senator Benjamin Goodhue of Massachusetts purchased approximately one thousand cents around 1797 or 1798 and set them aside for his daughters. The coins passed through several generations of the family before reaching David Nichols of Gallows Hill near Salem, who sold them around 1863. The Nichols Hoard, as this accumulation is known in the literature, supplied the market with Mint State examples of the 1796 and 1797 dates that would not otherwise exist in anything like their current numbers.² When you buy a Mint State 1796 or 1797 Draped Bust cent today, there is a reasonable probability you are handling a coin that spent sixty years in a Massachusetts family's keeping before Nichols distributed it. That provenance does not change what the coin is, but it does explain why these two specific dates are available in grades that other early Draped Bust cents simply are not.

IINITED STATES, 1/000, and Three Errors at Once

The Draped Bust cent series generated an unusual accumulation of blundered inscriptions and die errors over its eleven years, a reflection of hand-punching individual letters and numerals into steel under ongoing production pressure. The 1796 LIHERTY cent, where the B in LIBERTY was punched into the die inverted before being corrected, left a ghost H in the impression and was inherited from the Liberty Cap series of that same year. By 1801 the Mint produced something considerably more elaborate.

The Three Errors Reverse of 1801 puts three simultaneous blunders on a single die. The fraction reads 1/000 rather than 1/100. One side of the wreath carries a stem as intended; the other omits it entirely. The first letter of UNITED was formed by placing two capital I punches side by side, producing IINITED. All three errors on the same die, all presumably examined and passed before coins were struck from it. A second 1801 reverse attempted to correct the fraction and produced an intermediate state reading 100/000. The 1802 date repeated the 1/000 error on certain dies and added a stemless wreath variety. The 1803 date compounds the collecting situation further with Large Date and Small Date obverses combined with Large Fraction and Small Fraction reverses in various pairings, the rarest being the Large Date with Small Fraction combination.³

The 1807 Comet variety takes its name from a curved die crack running behind Liberty's hair that suggests a comet's tail in motion. It is not a rarity, and I do not think it would attract a fraction of its current following if it had a less evocative name. But it does, and collectors have sought it out by name for generations, which is itself a useful lesson about what drives demand in a series where variety names carry weight.

Mickley Spent Years Looking for His Birth Year

Official Mint records report a production figure exceeding 900,000 cents for 1799. Die analysis tells a different story: the great majority of coins counted in that total were struck from 1798-dated dies, and the number of pieces actually bearing the 1799 date is estimated at approximately 42,540, split between the 1799/8 overdate and the normal date. Even that modest figure translated poorly into survivors. The coins circulated heavily in a period when copper was regularly melted and coin collecting as an organized hobby did not yet exist.⁴

Joseph J. Mickley, a Philadelphia collector born in 1799 who became one of the founding figures of American numismatics, spent years trying to find a cent from his birth year. His search was well known in collecting circles and helped establish the 1799 as an object of deliberate pursuit that has never lost its hold on the market. Only one Mint State example of either 1799 variety is known: a normal date specimen graded Mint State 61 Brown by PCGS, sold for $977,500 in the September 2009 Dan Holmes Collection sale at Stack's Bowers, having passed through the hands of Ted Naftzger and Dr. William Sheldon before that.⁵ Mickley, who died in 1878, reportedly never did find a nice one.

One Die Pair, Deteriorating Fast: The 1804

The 1804 cent was struck from a single die pair, and those dies began deteriorating early. Later strikes show progressive weakness and surface porosity as the dies wore down. Total survivors run into the hundreds, possibly approaching a thousand, but coins above Fine are uncommon and above Very Fine are genuinely scarce. Two examples have been documented in Uncirculated condition; both barely clear the Mint State threshold. The 1804 ranks alongside the 1799 as the two genuine rarities of the Draped Bust series, and even heavily worn examples command prices that reflect the scarcity accurately.⁶

The rarity eventually attracted an entrepreneurial response. Around 1860, with coin collecting newly popular after the large cent's retirement in 1857, someone acquired 1804-dated Mint dies that had been sold as scrap metal and produced unauthorized strikings from them. The obverse was from a corrected 1803 die; the reverse was from an 1820 cent. That combination never existed in regular production, which is the first diagnostic. The second is the advanced die rust and cracking visible on both sides, reflecting the deteriorated state of the dies when they were used. Bowers quoted an earlier commentator who described the operation as designed to supply dealers with a coin they could sell to unsuspecting collectors.⁷ The private restrikes have been collected ever since as an artifact of the period, clearly distinguished from genuine originals by anyone who knows the diagnostics. The distinction matters because the restrikes are not rare and the genuine 1804 is.

Building the Set

For type collectors, the Draped Bust cent is accessible in a way the Liberty Cap series is not. A presentable example in Good through Fine from one of the common dates, 1800, 1802, 1803, 1805, or 1806, can be acquired at a cost measured in hundreds of dollars rather than thousands. The 1796 and 1797 dates are more expensive but not prohibitive in lower grades, particularly given the Nichols Hoard's effect on Mint State supply for those two dates. The 1799 and 1804 are in a different category: even heavily worn examples carry four-figure prices, and anything above Fine climbs toward ranges that reflect genuine rarity rather than collector preference.

Variety collectors have extensive material across all eleven dates. The Sheldon and Noyes references cover the die marriages systematically, and several varieties carry market significance well above what their nominal rarity rating would suggest: the 1801 Three Errors Reverse, the 1803 Large Date Small Fraction, the 1799/8 overdate, the 1807/6 small overdate. Strike quality varies considerably across the series, and original-surface brown examples command clear premiums over cleaned or chemically treated coins at every grade level. Only a handful of Draped Bust cents across all dates have been certified above Gem quality (Mint State 65 or finer). Original red copper coloration is exceptional in any grade and should be examined carefully, as artificial enhancement of copper surfaces has been practiced in this series for a long time.