What Are the Most Famous U.S. Coins by Denomination? Half Cents to Half Dimes

 

Throughout our nation’s nearly 250-year history, a surprising level of continuity has existed as it pertains to our coinage. The Coinage Act of 1792 not only founded the United States Mint but also laid the groundwork for the U.S. monetary system and established several coin types that are still produced today. Some coin types have fallen by the wayside, while others, introduced in the 19th century as the United States modernized and expanded westward, didn’t pan out. In this series of articles, we review the country’s 17 denominations and give our picks for the most famous coin from each.

Do you have a favorite “famous” coin that didn’t make our list? Let us know your picks and the reasons why in the comments.

The Most Famous Half Cent

Unless you were a coin collector at any given point, you’d be forgiven for not knowing about the half cent. Heck, as we enter 2025, we are as surprised as anyone that the Congress of the United States insists on the continued production of the cent.

Be that as it may, the half-cent denomination was a copper coin denomination that was struck intermittently from 1793 to 1857. Called the little sister to the “large” cent, the half cent contained more copper and was substantially bigger than the modern one-cent coin. In 1857, when copper became too expensive to continue the production of such large coins, Congress shrank the cent and eliminated the half cent.

This catalyzed one of the earliest waves of coin-collecting interest in the United States. As the Mint began to accept exchanges of obsolete larger coins for the new small cents, collectors across the eastern portion of the United States started to seek out large cents and half cents, especially those struck in the early years. Large cents drew more attention as their production was more continuous, and over time, an untold number of coins were saved from the melter’s pot.

Common date half cents are generally affordable, even in high circulated grades. Rarer dates, however, are highly sought after and bring big money at auction.

As for the most famous half cent, our vote goes to the 1793 Liberty Cap Facing Left Half Cent, of which the two most famous examples have sold for $1,005,000 and $446,500, respectively. This design is among the earliest produced by the fledgling Mint, repurposing the 1792 Half Disme. That design was struck in low quantities, probably for Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who is said to have spent them on his travels from the capital city of Philadelphia to his Monticello home in Charlottesville. No examples survive finer than the T. James Clarke/James R. McGuigan specimen illustrated above.

The Most Famous Cent

The one-cent coin or “penny” has been minted continuously since 1793, although a planchet shortage prevented 1815-dated coins from being struck, and a 1982 change in composition has left the famous copper with just trace amounts of its namesake metal. Still, it’s hard to argue that the cent is not one of the most popularly collected coins in all of numismatics.

Several interesting Lincoln Cents (issued since 1909) draw widespread interest. The 1909-S V.D.B., made famous for its low mintage and the mid-year removal of artist Victor David Brenner’s initials on subsequent strikings, has long been sought after by series completionists. So too, has the 1955 Doubled Die, which was struck in limited numbers and famously found in cigarette machines the year of its accidental release.

Yet these scarce and highly valuable cents can’t hold a candle to the most famous cent of all, the 1793 Wreath Cent, Strawberry Leaf variety. This variety features a trefoil leaf (which scarcely resembles a strawberry plant) on the obverse above the date. Four examples are known, and the PCGS VG10 is the finest. This coin was formerly graded F12 by NGC and was represented as such in its 2004 and 2009 auction appearances.

Had one survived in Mint State, the Strawberry Leaf Cent would likely sell for $5 to $10 million. As it stands, these well-worn rarities trade for hundreds of thousands of dollars – less than the 1793 AMERI. and the 1794 Liberty Cap with Stars. Still, you won’t find a large cent more famous, or elusive.

The Most Famous Two-Cent Piece

The Two-Cent Piece was a product of the American Civil War, an attempt by Congress to get minor coins circulating again after a period of understandable hoarding. When the Southern States entered into rebellion, they took with them three of the nation’s four mints, leaving only the Philadelphia Mint operational for the duration of the war.

While the Two-Cent Piece’s shield and wreath design doesn’t rate amongst the most artistic United States coin designs, it was the first circulating U.S. coin to bear the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, reflecting the nation’s deeply-held religious sentiments during those desperate times. The Two-Cent Piece was produced from 1864 to 1873 but was essentially out of mode by the end of the 1860s.

The Mint’s highest output of Two-Cent Pieces came in the issue’s inaugural year. In total, Philadelphia struck 19,822,500 examples of the new type, slightly revising the design early in the year to increase the size of the IN GOD WE TRUST motto. This, of course, means that collectors have two major varieties of 1864 Two-Cent Pieces to collect, with the Small Motto variant being much scarcer. In addition to coins issued for circulation, the Mint struck no more than a few dozen examples in Proof format.

These Proof versions infrequently appear at auction, and usually survive without the bright orange copper color of their original issue. The example illustrated is one of the finest known examples. It retains much of the coin’s original color and is graded Proof 65 Red and Brown by PCGS. In this state of preservation, collectors have paid well over $100,000 for the opportunity to add the Small Motto 1864 Proof to their collections.

The Most Famous Three-Cent Piece

If you thought the Two-Cent Piece was an unusual coin, the Three-Cent Piece presents an oddball denomination in two formats: one made of billon silver and the other struck in nickel. The United States Mint produced Three-Cent Pieces starting in 1851, with a button-sized silver version that featured a shield and the Roman numeral III. In 1865, the nickel base-metal version was issued so that the American people could redeem hundreds of thousands of pieces of fractional currency – emergency banknotes that replaced hoarded coins in circulation during the war.

While there are several scarce dates, none of the Three-Cent Pieces in either format are definitionally rare. As with the Two-Cent Piece, Proof versions were struck in much lower numbers. The key to the Three-Cent Nickel series is the 1877, a Proof-only issue with a mintage of 900 coins. Proof-only issues are collected not just by Proof coin specialists but also by collectors pursuing one example of every date. This makes the bidding on nicer pieces even more competitive. Take the example illustrated above, graded Proof 67* Cameo by NGC, which Stack’s Bowers sold for $8,100 this past April – more than three times the published Guide Book price for an example in Proof 63.

The Most Famous Nickel (Five-Cent Piece)

We call our five-cent coin the nickel, even though that is a bit of a misnomer. The coin is made of 75% copper and 25% nickel, but the term “nickel” has stuck. Incidentally, our nickel wasn’t the first coin to use the notoriously hard to stripe metal. Before its adoption on the five-cent piece, the Mint used the metal on the one-cent and three-cent coins. For the one-cent coin, the composition was changed back to a copper alloy after the Civil War, and the Three-Cent Nickel hung around until the mid-1880s. The nickel five-cent coin, however, has lasted, and with the exception of 1942-1945 when the composition was changed due to World War II, the stuff the coin is made of is the same today as it was when the five-cent nickel debuted in 1866.

The most famous five-cent nickel coin, by far, is the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel. This is almost certainly an “unofficial” coin struck at the United States Mint in Philadelphia and then secretly removed for personal gain. In the December 1919 issue of The Numismatist, former Mint employee Samuel W. Brown offered $500 in cash for a 1913 Liberty Head Nickel. This was an incredible amount of money to offer for a coin, then just six years old, and of course, as Brown was the only person on the planet who knew that the coin existed (he had all five of them), no one came forward to sell him the coins.

In 1920, Brown came forward with five coins. These were eventually sold to super-collector “Colonel” E.H.R. Green as a group. After his death, the Green estate sold them to the partnership of coin dealer B.G. Johnson and a young Eric P. Newman.

From here, the coins were broken up and sold individually, trophy coins to be pursued by the wealthiest collectors of each era. Super-collector Louis E. Eliasberg purchased one for his historic collection. Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss once owned one. A coin dealer once had one in his pocket when he and some friends went to see the notorious film Behind the Green Door at a movie theater. Another was featured in an episode of Hawaii Five-O.

If offered for sale today, a 1913 Liberty Head Nickel might fetch between $4 and $6 million. Of the five known, only three remain in private hands. As for recent appearances, Stack’s Bowers sold the Eliasberg coin in 2018 for $4,560,000. If you’d like to see us discuss the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel with ANA Money Museum curator Doug Mudd, check out this CoinWeek video from 2017.

The Most Famous Half Dime

The story of our nation’s coinage begins in 1792 with the striking of 1,500 half dismes (they called dimes dismes (pronounced “deems”) back in the day) at the request of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, an obscure gentleman named Alexander Hamilton, and Revolutionary War financier Gouverneur Morris were the key architects of the independent American monetary system.

The 1792 Half Disme is an iconic and captivating American coin that was struck in a basement workshop while the first Philadelphia Mint was still under construction. Normally, such an important coin would be a shoo-in for the most famous of a denomination. But in the case of the half dime, it is the unique 1870-S Liberty Seated Half Dime that takes that distinction.

Regular issue coins with a mintage of one are remarkable enough on their own, but the existence of this coin went undetected for more than a century and was only discovered at the American Numismatic Association’s (ANA) 1978 Annual Convention. Could it have been a spare for the San Francisco Mint’s cornerstone time capsule? Could it have been a test striking secretly spirited away by the Mint’s coiner? Its origin is shrouded in mystery and speculation, which only adds to the allure of one of the most famous U.S. coins. This important rarity last came to auction in January 2023, where it sold for $3,120,000.

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