I've been studying Large Cents very closely since starting to collect them about 5 years ago. The one coin that really has very little information on it out there is the infamous 1795 Jefferson Head large cent. Now I know the following so far: - Produced by John Harper. Supposedly, he was trying to win a contract with the US mint to produce coinage (this is during the era where the Mint was reducing the weight of the Cent in order to be cost effective. At the time, it cost $1.22 to produce one hundred cents). - Coin went 'unnoticed' until Walter Breen identified the type in 1952 - Is found Plain Edged as well as Reeded Edge Well, that is about the summary of what I know. I guess I would love to have people answer, or weigh in on the following questions I have on this coin. Thanks in advance! I love to learn new things about the coins! 1. John Harper slipped these coins into circulation? How many did he produce? Did he really just donate $100 or so to the general public type of thing?! 2. Did this type really go unnoticed for 150+ years? Or, is there an earlier book that refers to this type? 3. Who exactly IS the portrait of? Do we know? 4. The coin design of the Jefferson is quite similar in many ways to the regular issue Cent... with some obvious differences between the two. Did he just 'copy' and 'improve' the original design, or was he involved with the early design of the regular issue cent?
Harper was trying to win a coining contract. He produced his own dies and planchets and demonstrated his coining ability to a committee of government officials in the basement of his sawmill. (Same basement where the 1792 half dismes were coined.) The coins struck were distributed to the committee. Harper did not get a contract and later when they realized that it probably wasn't a good idea to leave the dies with Harper they were recovered and Harper was reimbursed $100 for his expenses. The Jefferson heads were known at least as early as 1869. They may have been known earlier than that but 1869 was when they got the name Jefferson Heads. Frank Stewart discussed Harpers bid for a coinage contract in 1924. Breen decided in 1952 that the Jefferson heads were the pieces that Harper struck for the committee. This was probably just speculation on Breen's part because as far as I know there is no definitive proof linking the Jefferson heads to Harper. There is no official description of what he struck other than "cents". Personally I believe the Jefferson heads are simply contemporary counterfeits. There are just some things that don't make sense if this was a presentation to impress a government committee. The engraving is crude compared to the official cents, hardly something to convince the committee that you can do better than the mint. Secondly, for a simple demonstration why are there so many variations? There is only one obv die but two different reverses, two different planchet thicknesses, plain edge and two different sets of lettered edge dies. There are less than 75 Jefferson Head cents out there, but there are five different varieties! It would seem to me that if you are trying to show how you can do a better job than the mint, you would want to rapidly strike a large number of the same coin, not just a few with a lot of changes. That sounds to me like someone who makes up a few cents when he needs them and in small batches. (A cent was a significant amount of money then.) As for the bust it was not intended to be anyone in particular, just a poor copy of the head on the current cent.
Thanks Condor! Great information as always! It's funny that you bring up the possibility of the Jefferson's being contemporary counterfeits. I recently read a similar article on the Strawberry Leaf varieties as well. It was broadly thought these were also contemporary counterfeits. Then, at a Nuismatic show, someone took a genuine Strawberry Leaf and compared the edge to a 1793 Liberty cap. The edges lined up. This meant one of two things.... First, these were genuine Mint issued coins. OR.... The Strawberry Leaf coins were in fact produced on Mint made blanks (Where the lettering was put on prior to the obverse and reverse stamping). That all being said, has anyone sat down and really cataloged all the counterfeit Large Cents (contemporary) of that era? As you said, five cents in those days was a fair bit of money, and well worth someone's time to make their own coins! Finally.... If the Jefferson coin turns out to be in fact a counterfeit... doesn't that change it's category from "Coin" to nothing more than "Token"? Thanks for the information!
Even if they could be proven to be the Harper demonstration pieces they still would not be coins as they are not mint products. At best they are a privately made pattern, at worst they are contemporary counterfeits. Either way they are not coins. I don't know if anyone has cataloged all the contemporary counterfeit large cents but apparently there is some database of such information in the middle and late date series (For some reason it seems like most of the are 1818, 1846 and 1848 cents.). other than the Jeffereson Head, the closest things I know of to contemporary counterfeits in the early dates are the "Smith counterfeits" which are re-engraved genuine cents, and the electrotypes that collectors used either as hole fillers or as study pieces of rare varieties in and era when photos were not available. And of course the altered date "1815" coins.
Stepping outside large cents a bit there are also the Edwards copy 1796 half cents. If you go into Connecticut copper coins there is speculation that quite a few of the varieties are contemporary counterfeits but the series as a whole was so poorly done that it's really impossible to differentiate.
