By 1794, the mint had settled into its production schedule fairly well. It still had its problems, but the quality of the coins had improved markedly over 1793. The cent mintage for 1794 was 918,521. There are 64 known die varieties. This large number has attracted an impressive number of devoted collectors who call themselves, “The Boys of ‘94.” As a date, 1794 is fairly common, but the die variety collectors have taken a fair number of pieces off the market making it a bit more challenging for the date collector. The major die varieties for 1794 are the heads of 1793, ‘94 and ‘95. The head of ‘93, which is the rarest, has delicate design details, although most pieces have too much wear to show very much of it. The head of ‘94 cents are in higher relief and are the most attractive in my opinion. The head of ‘95 coins are in lower relief and are not as attractive. This 1794 large cent is a Sheldon-21. It is rated by specialists as tied for the seventh known for the S-21 variety. It came from the Dan Holmes collection. The official EAC net grade is EF-45. It is housed in a PCGS MS-62, Brown holder. Such differences are common between the commercial third party grading services and the ultra conservative EAC grading standards. My grade is AU-58. This piece has it dies divided between two eras. The obverse has the head of 1794. The reverse was paired with a head of 1793 variety. My general comment about this piece is that it looks quite eloquent for a humble cent. Toward the end of the year, Thomas Jefferson, who had the cabinet responsibility for mint as Secretary of State, arranged to have the bonds lowered so that key mint officials could handle gold and silver. He also arranged for them to get loans so that they could post the bonds. The result was that the mint issued the first silver dollars in October and introduced the half dollar in November.
