My good friend Rick Snow created this wonderful video on how the small cent came about. It's a very interesting story and Rick did a great job researching and putting this together. He shows a lot of photos from the Hoosier Collection which includes many beautiful patterns. Here's an excerpt from the video: "Beginning in 1850, the historic flood of new gold from California cheapened that metal and made all prices related to gold more expensive. In 1853, the weight of smaller silver coins was reduced to keep them from being melted. That same, year the large copper cent and half-cent began to cost the Mint more than its face value to produce." I highly recommend this very educational presentation to any of you who collect small cents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4vWf6u9soU
Neat video. I'm hoping to stop in and meet Rick in the next month or so as I'm finding I'm getting to Tucson a lot lately with my daughter attending U of A. He sounds like an interesting guy. Guy
