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Lot 2486
1877 Indian Head Cent. PCGS graded MS-64 Red. Popular Key date with well over 50% Mint Red color. The obverse is semi-reflective. Pop 41; 1 in 64+, 23 in 65, 6 in 66
All non-Proof 1877 Indian cents are seen struck using one reverse die, which shows a shallow N in ONE. This is a reverse type used from the 1860s until 1869 and sporadically thereafter until 1873. This reverse die shows no die cracks, although 90% of this issue show the clashing described above. How could the entire mintage of 852,000 pieces have been struck with only one reverse? I do not have an answer. Mint records show 6 reverse dies being produced for regular coinage in 1877, but 4 were not used until 1878, leaving 2 reverse dies used for 1877. Where are the coins struck from the second die? Is that one of the Proof dies? Either the actual mintage is even lower than the number customarily reported, or the entire batch of 1877's from a second die is missing.
The mintage of 1877 cents was an all time low for the series, not to be underproduced until the 1909 San Francisco Mint Indian Cent. It is true that the low mintage is due in part to a slowdown in the economy, which forced large quantities of older cents back into circulation. This caused the Mint to produce less new cents. However, this explanation oversimplifies the cause and effect. To get to the real reason of the scarcity of cents of this date we must go back to the Mint act of 1864, which gave a limited legal tender limit of only ten cents to the new bronze cent. No special legislative action was made to allow Banks to move the quantities of cents that accumulated in their vaults. The action needed to alleviate this problem came in the form of the Mint act of March 3, 1871, which required the Mint to redeem the older minor coins in any quantity. At first the coins, which in addition to bronze cents included older copper cents, half cents, copper-nickel cents, bronze two cent pieces, nickel three cents and nickel five cent pieces, were melted and recoined into new three and five cent nickels and bronze cents. By 1874, as less and less of the pre-1864 coinage was being redeemed it became obvious that the remaining bronze cents and nickel coinage could just be taken in and paid out without going through the recoinage process. The Mint then operated as a clearinghouse for the backlog of minor coins, reissuing them side by side with newly minted coins. Since the coins were already on the books from their original mintage, they were accounted for separately from the mintage of new coinage. With the surge of redemption in 1877, new coinage was cut off early in the year. Over 10 million cents were issued in 1877, but less than 1 million of them were new coins carrying that date. The rest of the issuance was made up of older coins (PCGS # 2129) .
Although this lot comprises the Key Date 1877 Indian Cent and not affected by what was to happen, it had long been thought that the subsidiary coins below $1 denomination which suddenly disappeared in 1861-62 during the Civil War were melted or sent to Europe and sold as bullion. As a matter of fact only a small proportion were disposed of in this way. The great majority went to countries where they had values as coins above their bullion values, some to Canada but most to Latin-America. Their dramatic reappearance many years later is described in a subsequent chapter. The capacity of Latin-America to absorb United States silver was obviously limited, but there was some place for new coins even after the wholesale exportation of 1862, and in later years the mints continued to coin silver for bullion dealers who shipped the coins to Latin-America and brought back gold or foreign silver coins. After June, 1862, the United States mints were, so far as silver was concerned, merely establishments conducted for the benefit of New York and San Francisco bullion dealers.
Estimated Value $9,000 - 10,000.
The Coltrin Family Collection.
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| Realized $8,338 |
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