Coin Design History

Flying Eagle Cents (1856–1858)

Collectors Key Editorial  •  Small Cent Series

The Problem With the Old Cent and the Problem With Replacing It

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 carried no legal tender status, so merchants could refuse it, and many did. Its weight and size were unpopular, and pure copper corroded in pockets and cash drawers. The case for discontinuing it was unambiguous.

What made the replacement complicated was the Spanish and Mexican fractional silver that had circulated in America since the colonial era and had been legal tender in the United States since 1793. These coins had filled genuine gaps for generations; you could not simply demonetize them without providing something that served the same transactional function. Mint Director James Ross Snowden needed a new cent that was small enough to carry comfortably, cheap enough to produce in volume, and available in sufficient quantity to absorb the foreign coins out of circulation while meeting everyday demand. The Coinage Act of 1857 addressed all three conditions simultaneously: it authorized the new small cent, retired the large cent and half cent, and demonetized the circulating foreign pieces. The act also allowed the Mint to pay out the new small cents in exchange for old large cents, half cents, and Spanish and Mexican fractional silver, an incentive that drew much of the foreign money out of commerce, though some lingered in rural areas for decades.¹

Gobrecht's Eagle, via Titian Peale

The obverse design Longacre assembled for the new cent was not original to him. The flying eagle came from the pattern silver dollars Christian Gobrecht had produced in 1836, 1838, and 1839, on which the bird appeared on the reverse. Gobrecht had developed it from a sketch by Titian Peale, a naturalist and artist whose animal studies Vermeule later described as producing the first numismatic eagle in American coinage that could be said to derive from nature rather than from heraldry.² Longacre transferred the design to the obverse of the cent, the eagle soaring to the left with wings spread wide, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arching above, date centered below.

The reverse wreath Longacre drew from his own recent work. The same agricultural composition of corn, wheat, cotton, and tobacco he had used on the 1854 gold dollar and three-dollar gold pieces enclosed ONE CENT on the cent's reverse, tied at the bottom with a ribbon. The copper-nickel alloy gave the coin a slightly silvery appearance; the public called them "white cents" or informally "nicks." Nineteen millimeters in diameter, 72 grains in weight, a substantial reduction from everything that preceded it. Plain edge throughout.

Six Hundred Patterns and a Price That Said Everything

The new cent needed congressional authorization before it could circulate, and Snowden needed to demonstrate the design and composition to the legislators whose support he required. In 1856 the Mint produced approximately 600 pattern coins and distributed them to members of Congress, Treasury officials, President Franklin Pierce, and others in a position to advance the enabling legislation. The coins were not authorized for commerce and were not released to the public.³

Word reached the small but active collector community quickly, and by 1859 pieces were trading for as much as $2 each, two hundred times face value. The demand prompted the Mint to produce restrike examples, adding a thousand or more pieces to the supply. The total population of genuine 1856 Flying Eagle cents, originals and restrikes combined, is estimated at roughly two thousand. Distinguishing originals from restrikes with confidence requires careful examination and often a specialist's opinion. The John Beck hoard of 531 pieces, dispersed in several auctions during the 1970s, came onto the market without meaningfully affecting prices.

The Strike Problem Longacre Did Not Solve

Longacre's design made the cent difficult to strike fully. The eagle's head, upper wing tips, and tail on the obverse sat in the die at the same depth as the heaviest sections of the agricultural wreath on the reverse. Under striking pressure, metal flows from the center outward to fill both sides simultaneously. With the eagle's extremities directly opposing the wreath's densest areas, the metal could not fully serve both. Either the eagle showed weakness in the head and tail, or the wreath opposite those features was soft. The hard copper-nickel alloy made it worse by accelerating die wear and resisting the pressures needed to bring up the design fully.

Fully struck Flying Eagle cents, with sharp detail in both the eagle's head and the opposing wreath leaves, are considerably rarer than the mintage figures suggest. Most examples are weakly struck. A collector new to the series must learn to distinguish original striking weakness, which affects specific known areas, from wear, which produces more generalized surface loss. A coin that appears circulated in the eagle's head may have left the Mint in exactly that condition. Snowden recognized the problem quickly. In 1857 he was already pushing for a replacement subject for the cent, at one point suggesting a portrait of Christopher Columbus. Longacre declined, noting that objections had been raised to placing Washington on coinage and a Columbus design would face the same resistance.⁴

1858 Large Letters, Small Letters, and an Overdate

Most of the variety interest in the series falls on the 1858 date. Two versions of the obverse lettering were produced, identifiable by the spacing between A and M in AMERICA. The Large Letters version, struck earlier in the year, has the two letters touching. The Small Letters version, struck later as the Mint attempted to address the striking problems by modifying the dies, shows a visible gap between them. Both varieties trade at similar prices in circulated grades; Small Letters examples are generally scarcer in higher grades and command premiums accordingly.

The 1858/7 is the only overdate in the series, and it is subtle enough to be overlooked. The variety was produced when an 1857-dated die was modified by grinding down the final digit and punching an 8 over the remaining surface, a cost-saving measure to extend a serviceable die into the new year. Traces of the underlying 7 are visible beneath the 8 on early die states; the undertype fades on later strikes from the die. The overdate is scarce and consistently commands significant premiums over the regular 1858 issues.⁵

Saint-Gaudens Noticed

In 1905, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, newly commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt to redesign American coinage, wrote to Roosevelt about his initial proposals. He had been considering a flying eagle for the cent and described the Gobrecht-derived design on the old Flying Eagle cent in terms that remain the best short assessment of what the coin achieved aesthetically: he had not seen it for many years, he wrote, and was so impressed on reencountering it that he thought nothing better could be done for the cent with some modifications. The Flying Eagle cent did not survive long enough to receive Saint-Gaudens's treatment directly. The eagle Saint-Gaudens planned for the cent went instead to the double eagle ($20 gold coin), where it became one of the most celebrated coin designs in American history.⁶

Sixty to One Hundred Pattern Sets and the End of the Eagle

By mid-1858 Snowden had directed Longacre to develop a replacement. The Mint produced between sixty and one hundred sets of twelve pattern cents in various designs, distributed to officials and quietly sold to collectors over the following years. Longacre's Liberty in an Indian-style feathered headdress was selected, paired with a reverse wreath in low enough relief that the die-opposition problem would not recur. On November 4, 1858, Snowden wrote formally to the Treasury that the Flying Eagle had proven not particularly acceptable, that the public found the bird unnatural in appearance, and that a Native American motif would give the cent a more distinctly American character. The Indian Head cent debuted in 1859 at the same composition. The Flying Eagle had served two circulation years and produced roughly 42 million coins.

Building the Set

Three circulation issues, four if you count the 1856 pattern, five if you add the 1858/7 overdate. The whole series can be assembled in a long afternoon if money is no object. In practice the 1856 is the constraint: it is not rare in absolute terms, but collectors have sought it for nearly 170 years and demand has always exceeded supply.

For a type collector, the 1857 or either 1858 variety works equally well. All three are available across a wide grade range at accessible prices through About Uncirculated. Strike quality is the variable that separates good examples from mediocre ones at the Mint State level: a well-struck coin with a sharp eagle head, full feather separation, and defined wing tips is a meaningfully better coin than a numerically higher grade with the characteristic production weakness. Evaluate strike independently of grade before buying anything above Extremely Fine 45. Snow's specialist reference catalogues the die variety landscape fully for collectors who want to go deeper than the Red Book major varieties.