The Flying Eagle cent is a one-cent piece struck by the Mint of the United States as a pattern coin in 1856 and for circulation in 1857 and 1858. The coin was designed by Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre, with the eagle in flight based on the work of Longacre’s predecessor, Christian Gobrecht.
About Flying Eagle cent in brief
The Flying Eagle cent is a one-cent piece struck by the Mint of the United States as a pattern coin in 1856 and for circulation in 1857 and 1858. The coin was designed by Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre, with the eagle in flight based on the work of Longacre’s predecessor, Christian Gobrecht. The cent was the first official United States coin to be struck at the Philadelphia Mint in 1793. These pieces, today known as large cents, were made of pure copper and were about the size of a half dollar. They were struck every year, except 1815 due to a shortage of metal, but were slow to become established in commerce. So many cents were issued that they choked commercial channels, especially as they were not legal tender and no one had to take them. By the early 1850s, the large cent was becoming both unpopular in commerce and expensive to coin. After experimenting with various sizes and compositions, the Mint decided on an alloy of 88% copper and 12% nickel for a new, smaller cent. The eagle design did not strike well, and was replaced in 1859 by Longacre’s Indian Head cent. In 1837, the eccentric New York chemist Lewis Feuchtwanger had experimented with a smaller cent size in making model coins as part of a plan to sell his alloy to the government for use in coinage. His pieces circulated as hard times tokens in the recession years of the late 1830s and early 1840s. By 1850, it was no longer profitable for the Mint to strike cents, and on May 14, New York Senator Daniel S.
Dickinson introduced legislation for a cent made out of billon, copper with a small amount of silver. It was widely felt that coins should contain a large proportion of their face value in metal. At the time, it would be annular; that is, it will have a hole in the middle. The Mint struck experimental pieces, and found that it was difficult to eject such pieces from the presses where they were struck. Provisions for a small cent were dropped from the legislation that gave congressional approval for the three-cent pieces in 1851. A drop in copper prices in 1852 and early 1852 made the matter of a smaller cents less urgent at the Department of the Treasury, which supervised Mint activities. The new cent was issued in exchange for the worn Spanish colonial silver coin that had circulated in the U.S. until then, as well as for its larger predecessor. In his 1854 annual report, Director James Ross Snowden advocated the issue of small cents as the elimination of the half-cent, which he described as useless in commerce, and described the half cents as “unuseful in commerce” In 1853, patterns using a base-metal alloy were struck using a quarter eagle die. Some of the proposed alloys contained the metal nickel. Also considered for use for the cent was about about about a dime a bronze and various varieties of German silver.
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This page is based on the article Flying Eagle cent published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 11, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
