The history of American coinage mirrors the history of the American nation and its people. ModernCoinMart is proud to offer a vast selection of U.S. coins from colonial to modern times.n Before the United States Mint was established in 1792, foreign coins such as the Spanish-American Pieces of Eight circulated in the American colonies. Individual states also issued their own coinage. Then, in 1792, a law was passed by the young American Congress, which said that a new American currency unit would be established based on the pieces of eight but called by an old name, the dollar, and it would be divided decimally into dimes and cents.
The Establishment of the United States Mint and the First U.S. Coins
That same year Congress passed a law called the Mint Act of 1792 that implemented the decimal concept and called for the establishment of a United States mint in the capital of the time, Philadelphia. The legislation also determined what designs would appear on American coins. At the time, there was a lot of support for putting an image of the new president, George Washington, on our coins, but Washington objected, saying that any portrait on a coin would be monarchical and that our coinage had to reflect the founding principle of the new republic, that it was ruled by the people.
The Mint Act stipulated that one side (the obverse) of each coin had to have “an impression emblematic of liberty” and an inscription to that effect. The other side (the reverse) would incorporate the national bird, the eagle, for silver and gold coins, while copper coin reverses would indicate their denomination. The first new coin issued by the New Republic, a silver half dime, was struck on July 13, 1792. In October 1794, the first silver half dollars and then silver dollars (the flowing hair type designed by Robert Scott) were issued.
In 1793 the first copper coins were issued, which included cents and half cents. In 1795, the first gold coins were struck, which included eagles and half eagles, also designed by Robert Scott. In 1796 a gold quarter eagle followed. By this time, the mint was experiencing a shortage of the metals needed to issue coins, and there were few domestic sources of silver, gold, or copper at the time. Between 1796 and 1837, Cornish and Welsh copper was being used to produce planchets for copper coins after the mint turned to Great Britain for help. By 1837 domestic sources of copper and gold were discovered. Just before that, in 1835, legislation was passed to create three new mint branches in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dahlonega, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana, which were located near the mines that supplied the metals. During the Civil War, coins were hoarded and went into hiding, and the American people turned to paper currency.
Lady Liberty on U.S. Coins
From the start of the U.S. Mint until 1947, circulating coinage designs continued to be dominated by the presence of Lady Liberty on their obverses and an American eagle on their reverses. The way Liberty appeared on those coins varied greatly in terms of dress, hairstyle, pose, and, to a lesser degree, ethnicity or race. In almost all cases, she appeared on these coins as a Caucasian woman of European origin and later on some coins as a Native American woman or man.
Lady Liberty is an allegorical representation of the idea of freedom as a female. Sometimes she appears as a young woman, especially on earlier coins, and later as an older woman, who could be a matron or schoolteacher. In fact, the most famous American coin, the Morgan dollar, features an obverse image of Liberty based on a schoolteacher model. Read this Info-Vault article here for more information about the Morgan Dollar and how to collect it.
In the late 19th century, a powerful lobby representing the interests of the silver mining industry convinced Congress to begin striking Morgan dollars in 1878, until 1904, and then again in 1921 in quantities that far exceeded what was needed for commerce. That is why, to this day, there are so many Morgan dollars in the marketplace, even in high states of preservation and despite the mass meltings in the 20th century.
United States Coinage Renaissance
In the early 20th century, after a long period during the industrial era when our coin designs remained static and not terribly inspired, a renaissance in American coins began at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt worked with American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create what is still considered the most beautiful American coin: the $20 gold Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Two other famous sculptors, James Earle Fraser and Adolph Weinman, created the Buffalo or Indian Head nickel and the Walking Liberty half dollar, respectively, which were classic American icons of numismatics during this period.
Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, continued the process of redesigning our coinage, most notably the issuance of a coin in 1909 to mark the centennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln. This marked the start of what some call the period of “hero worship,” and others refer to as “the dead presidents,” which continues to dominate modern circulating coins today with obverses depicting former presidents, which have been used for many decades.
The United States Mint in the Modern Period
Modern Commemoratives
The two most important developments in the modern period of U.S. coinage are first the revival of commemorative coinage in 1982 with the issuance of the George Washington silver half dollar after a long hiatus following the end the classic period of commemoratives in 1955.
The American Eagle Program
The second is the introduction in 1986 of the American Eagle bullion coin program, which issued Silver Eagles and Gold Eagles in mint state and Proof versions. Over the past three decades, the program has been expanded to include various versions of these coins aimed at collectors that feature different finishes, and in 1997, the launch of the American Platinum Eagle program. Then, in 2017, the mint launched the American Palladium Eagle, which was issued only as a bullion coin that year and has featured a new finish every year since.
Recent U.S. Mint Highlights
Another key trend of the modern period was the release in 2017 of the first American coin to feature a truly modern representation of Liberty – one in which she appears as a young African-American woman on the 2017-W $100 American Liberty High Relief gold coin and silver medals plus the 1/10th-oz $10 Proof version of the gold coin. In recent years, the United States Mint has continued innovating and thrill collectors with first-ever issues and low-mintage releases. In 2019, the United States Mint began issuing select business strike quarters into circulation that feature the “W” Mint mark of the West Point Mint, which sent collectors searching through their pocket change hoping to find one. This tradition continued in 2021 with W mint marked quarters that also bore a V75 privy mark to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of Allied involvement in World War II, marking the first time a U.S. quarter bore a privy mark.
In November 2020, the United States Mint released the first-ever Silver and Gold American Eagle to feature a privy mark, bearing the same V75 privy as the 2020-W quarters. The 1/2 oz. American Gold Eagle was the lowest mintage American Gold Eagle to be issued to date, with an extremely limited mintage of just 1,945 pieces. Perhaps most exciting, in 2021, the Mint’s American Silver and Gold Eagle series will each receive a brand new reverse design for the first time in over 30 years of the series’ issuance, a move that is sure to generate collector excitement. To learn more about the forthcoming design change, read more on this Info-Vault article.
Going forward, our coinage will continue to evolve as the nation evolves, but no matter what changes are in store, our coins will continue to reflect the ideals on which the United States was founded.
