The Flying Eagle cent - a flawed beautyThe
Flying Eagle cent was the first small cent - also the first US coin made from a nickel alloy. These new small pennies, because of their light color, were sometimes called "white cents".
The
Flying Eagle cent is rightfully considered one of the most visually pleasing of all
US coins. The eagle is pictured in graceful flight, on an uncluttered background. But this design, though aesthetically charming, suffered in execution.
The coin was often weakly struck.
Nickel is a much harder metal than the copper, silver, and gold in common use at the mint. Some of the experimental nickel alloys quickly wore out the mint's steel dies. And yet, nickel coins were struck a few years later that were adequately struck - in the same mint, using the same presses.
The difficulty lay in the design of the
Flying Eagle penny more than the metal of its fabrication. Coin designers try to avoid weak strikes by not positioning high relief features on front and back congruently. The
Flying Eagle cent design suffered from the unfortunate placement of portions of the obverse eagle and reverse wreath in direct opposition. When the coin was struck, these design features, in their alignment, created voids not completely filled by the coin's metal at the moment of impact. With less metal pressured into these design elements, the resulting images lacked the sharpness and clarity of a technically superior design.
While weak strikes were perhaps embarrassing to the mint, the public was not overly fond of the
Flying Eagle cent for more practical reasons, in spite of the best intentions of the mint.
This coin wasn't easy to spend!
The small nickel alloy Flying Eagle was conceived as an economical replacement for the large cent, a copper coin which now cost more than face value to produce. Large cents were not popular either - they'd been in circulation from the earliest years of the republic, and many were worn, dirty, and generally unattractive to the public. The mint tried to promote the bright new coin as more hygienic and easier to handle due to its smaller size.
This may have been sufficient to put the coin "over the top" with the citizenry - except that the new coins were not afforded the status of "legal tender." In this way, the new coin was no better than its large sized predecessors. By failing to declare the coin legal tender for all debts public and private, there was no obligation to accept the coin in payment. The coin had been offered as new and convenient. Inconveniently, merchants often refused to accept the coins - being unwilling to assign a value to coins not guaranteed by the government that produced them!
I also think Wheezy got this one! Nice work!
Thanks for the contest BHerring1964!
Posted 04/22/2010 08:47 am
