The history of coins half-pennies and pennies

I am an avid coin collector,so I have decided to do some studying and do a series on the history of coins.

I will start with small denominations,half pennies and pennies.Of course I will include pictures of both my coins,and others from the web.

Coin collecting can be a fun and very interesting hobbie;not to mention it can be PROFITABLE too!

We will start first with the half-cent!

Let's get down to business!!

The war was over and it was time for America to get their finances together.One of the first order of business was to develop a money standard.

The mint was developed in 1792 and the very first half-cent was minted in July of 1793.It was copper and really most people just hated it.It was still minted for nearly 60 years.

Our money supply then was based on the Spanish "dollar".A bit or a "slice"{1/8th} of a Spanish dollar was worth 12 1/2 cents;so the people needed a way to make change.

As you can see above there were several different styles minted--I would love to have them all in my collection!!!

We will now move on to large cents.

It was LARGE too--about three times the size of the pennies we know now.

Here's a picture of one of my large cents--a very nice 1845 Braided hair.

The large cent slowly went down in size and ended up with what we have now--The price of copper and making them was not profitable.

They were made from 1793-1857 and in that time "shrunk" in size from 29 mm to 27 mm.

The designs changed often on the large cents because of disagreements at the mint.In the coin-collecting world this means many varieties.Some of those varities can be worth a LOT of money!!

The smaller,copper Flying eagle cents were made from 1857-1858.The cost of making the larger coins was getting out of hand;also the United States government wanted to take a bite out of the Spanish hold on our money supply.

First and foremost,that is not an indianhead.Longacre,the designer,actually mean't for that to be Lady Liberty wearing a bonnet.

The pennys were minted from 1859-1909.They are highly collectable;I have a few myself.In 1908 and 1909 San Francisco minted some which are very rare.

You can thank Theodore Roosevelt for what we call the "wheat" penny.

Abe Lincoln on the front was why you should thank Mr. Roosevelt.It was morally wrong to put the face of a person living or dead on money at that time.Teddy,bullish as he was,insisted and we had the wheat penny.Minted from 1909-1958.

In 1943 copper was needed terribly for the war.The mint then gave the copper for the war effort and made pennies of steel as you can see here.

Last we have the Lincoln Memorial.It has the same basic front of the "wheat" cent but with the Lincoln Memorial on the back.They have been minted from 1959-now.In 1982 the majority of copper was taken away from pennies.

They are a very costly coin for our government to make.

Should we do away with the penny and round up or down???

Many think so!!

Hope you got something out of this.I will be following up with hubs on other types of coins in the near future--check back!!!

©G.L. Boudonck