Three Cent Silvers / Trimes (1851–1873)

Postage, Gold, and a Denomination Created by Arithmetic

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 metal, was worth more as bullion than as coin. Merchants and speculators melted and exported silver coins to European markets where the metal commanded better prices. By 1850 American silver coins had largely disappeared from everyday commerce, leaving gold for large transactions, heavy copper large cents for small ones, and worn Spanish silver as the bulk of the small change in between.¹

Congress reduced first-class postage to three cents in 1851, and the problem became acute immediately: no three-cent coin existed, and the smallest silver piece available, the half dime, cost nearly twice as much as a stamp. Senator Daniel Dickinson of New York had introduced legislation for a three-cent coin in 1850. The postal rate change gave his proposal momentum that the coin shortage alone had not. The Act of March 3, 1851, authorized a three-cent piece in silver, and striking began that same year.

No Liberty, Debased Silver, and the Fish Scale Nickname

The coin designed by Chief Engraver James B. Longacre was 14 millimeters in diameter and weighed 0.80 grams, the smallest silver coin ever struck for United States circulation. It was also the first circulating American coin to carry no depiction of Liberty in any form, breaking a tradition unbroken since 1793. The obverse carries a six-pointed star with the Union shield at its center, surrounded by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the date. The reverse shows an ornate letter C enclosing the Roman numeral III, with thirteen stars around the border. Mint Director James Ross Snowden called it the "trime," a term numismatists later adopted. The public called it the "fish scale," a name earned by the coin's small, thin planchet, which made it hard to pick up and easy to lose.²

Congress authorized the Type 1 trime in .750 fine silver rather than the .900 standard for all other United States silver coins, making it the first American coin to contain metal worth significantly less than its face value. The low fineness was deliberate: a trime struck in standard silver would have been just as meltable as the coins whose disappearance had created the denomination in the first place. By debasing the alloy slightly below the melting threshold, Congress ensured it would circulate. The coin was also the first silver piece not to be legal tender for unlimited amounts; it was legal tender only for sums of thirty cents or less.³

Type 1 (1851–1853): One Branch Mint, Four Known Proofs

Type 1 production across three years exceeded 36 million pieces, the large majority at Philadelphia. The New Orleans Mint struck approximately 720,000 examples dated 1851-O, the only branch-mint issue in the entire series. The O mint mark appears on the reverse inside the opening of the C, a position requiring some attention to locate. The 1851-O is the key coin of the Type 1 sub-type, trading at a premium over comparable Philadelphia pieces that widens sharply in Mint State.

The first trimes were directed to post offices for use as exact stamp change, and they circulated immediately in that function. The broader public registered its complaints about handling them, but the coins served their purpose. The Type 1 Proof trime is another matter. Four 1851 Proof trimes are known to exist. The Eliasberg coin, graded PCGS PR66, sold at Stack's Bowers's November 2012 Baltimore auction for $176,250, and Flynn and Zack have suggested it is the coin acting Treasury Secretary William L. Hodge examined when he approved Longacre's design in March 1851.⁴ Whether that provenance is accurate cannot be confirmed.

Type 2 (1854–1858): Three Outlines and an Unstrikable Design

The 1853 Coinage Act addressed the root cause of the trime's creation by reducing the weights of the half dollar, quarter, dime, and half dime below their melting threshold. With those denominations now unprofitable to melt, silver returned to circulation. Congress also raised the trime's fineness to .900 to match the other silver coins and reduced its weight slightly, from 0.80 to 0.75 grams. A design change was needed to distinguish the new coins from the old. Longacre modified the obverse in 1854 by adding three outlines to the star's border, giving it three concentric lines, and added an olive sprig above and three arrows below the Roman numeral III on the reverse.

The three-outlined star proved essentially impossible to strike fully on a 14-millimeter coin. The outer outlines required metal to flow into fine recesses under pressure that a planchet of that size simply could not fully supply. The vast majority of Type 2 trimes left the Mint with the outer star outlines weak or absent. A sharply struck Type 2 business strike is genuinely rare. Bowers has written that sharply struck Type 2 coins are seldom met with and that most collectors must settle for some lightness of impression at the borders.⁵ Total Type 2 production across five years was fewer than five million pieces, all Philadelphia, and the series has one meaningful key date: the 1855 at approximately 139,000 pieces. Type 2 Proof mintages were extremely small; PCGS CoinFacts estimates that about 25 examples of the 1854 Proof survive. The Type 2 is routinely the hardest type to collect in premium condition, although the Type 1 came first and the Type 3 has the lower overall mintage.

Type 3 (1859–1873): Fixed, Then Stranded by the War

Longacre removed one of the star's three outlines in 1859, leaving two, while also using smaller, more evenly spaced lettering and smaller date numerals. Walter Breen saw the influence of Assistant Engraver Anthony C. Paquet in the new lettering. The Type 3 struck more cleanly than its predecessor; the striking problem that had defined the Type 2 was substantially solved. Then the Civil War made the improvement largely irrelevant. Silver disappeared from commerce again in 1862, and the improved coins had circulated for fewer than three full years before silver hoarding ended their commercial life.⁶

From 1859 through 1862, the Mint struck a combined total of roughly 1.5 million Type 3 trimes for circulation. Then the war arrived, silver disappeared, and annual production collapsed. The 1863 mintage fell to approximately 21,000 pieces and the 1864 to 12,000. The largest single-year total from 1863 onward was the 22,000 struck in 1866. These are business-strike figures, with Proofs struck separately (460 in 1863, 470 in 1864 and 725 in 1866); the business strikes exist but are rare enough that many collectors pursue the late-date Type 3 entirely in Proof form. From 1865 through 1872, annual circulation mintages fell as low as 1,000 in 1872, struck for a commerce that had little use for them. The Mint melted most remaining inventory in 1873 when the Coinage Act formally ended the denomination. The 1873 alone is truly Proof-only, approximately 600 struck. Late-date Type 3 business strikes from 1863 onward are genuine rarities; some dates are seldom seen in Mint State, and a complete business-strike set through 1872 is a collecting project that very few people have finished.⁷

Building the Set

The trime is collected in three ways, each with different demands. A three-type set, one coin per type, can be assembled at moderate cost using any common Philadelphia date from each sub-type. Type 1 from 1851 to 1853 is the most available. Type 3 from 1859 to 1862 is the next easiest to find in decent condition. Type 2 from 1854 to 1858 will be the most expensive of the three in comparable condition because the striking problem makes genuinely well-struck examples scarce relative to the population that circulated. For a type set the specific date matters less than finding an example with original surfaces and, for the Type 2, the best strike you can locate.

A complete date set extending through the late Type 3 dates is a serious undertaking. The 1855 Type 2 key date, the extremely low-mintage 1863 and 1864 business strikes, the 1873 Proof-only final date, and the remaining low-mintage issues from 1865 through 1872 are all scarce to genuinely rare. Flynn and Zack's monograph on the three-cent silver is the controlling specialist reference for attribution and population data; it documents the collecting landscape accurately and is worth reading before committing money to anything in the difficult late-series issues.

The 1851-O is the key date worth understanding clearly: it is a New Orleans issue in a series otherwise entirely confined to Philadelphia, and it commands premiums accordingly. The 1851 Proof, with four examples known, is outside practical collecting for everyone. The Type 2 Proofs in general are rare enough to be collected as a specialty distinct from the business-strike series. The 1862/1 overdate is among the more accessible variety targets in Type 3. The 1869/8 and the 1863/2 Proof overdate are for specialists who have already completed the easier parts of the series.

Original surfaces matter more here than in almost any other nineteenth-century silver series. The coins are thin, small, and were heavily handled in commerce; the supply of cleaned or damaged examples is substantial relative to the supply of genuinely original pieces. A well-preserved trime with undisturbed fields and original luster is worth considerably more than a nominally higher-grade example that has been cleaned, and the premium for originality is appropriate given how few such coins survive.