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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 671943, member: 66&quot;]Collecting in the united States was quite different in the 19th century.&nbsp; Although there were a few collectors around for the most part collecting did not take off in this country until 1857 with the retiremnet of the large cents.&nbsp; This started a lot of people off with the idea of putting a set together before they all disappeared from circulation.</p><p><br /></p><p>The American Numismatic Society was founded in 1858 and was almost totally devoted to te study and collecting of ancient coins and to a lesser extent colonial coins. It was commonly &quot;understood that those people who spent their time on the modern pieces for the 1850&#039;s,60&#039;s etc were basically wasting their time. (Although the ANS has one of th finest collections of U coins today, they still have a bias towards the ancient coins.)</p><p><br /></p><p>As mentioned earlier what collecting of US coin that was done was mainly just date sets.&nbsp; No attention was paid to mintmarks and most collectors simply kept their sets up to date by ordering a proof coin from the mint each year.&nbsp; Typically the collector would just send in the face value for a business strike or a few cents extra for a proof and the mint would send one by return mail.</p><p><br /></p><p>Staring in the 1860&#039;s the collecting of early large cents by die variety was becoming popular, and the collecting of tokens and medals depicting George washington was also very popular.&nbsp; By the end of the century they would be bringing prices that for many of them still have not been equaled.&nbsp; Mint Director Snowden of the Philadelphia mint was an avid collector of Washingtonia and one of the reason for the restriking of rarities, patterns and other items at the mint was to provide him with trading material that he could use to expand and improve the Mints collection of Washington pieces.</p><p><br /></p><p>The 1804 dollar was introduced to collectors for the first time when an engraving of this previously unknown coin was used as the cover illustration on the 1842 catalog of the Mint&#039;s collection holdings.</p><p><br /></p><p>The idea of collecting by mintmark was introduces by Augustus Heaton (I may have the first name wrong) in a booklet on mintmarks published in 1893.&nbsp; It had little effect and the collecting of US coins by date and mintmark did not become widespread until the 1920&#039;s and 30&#039;s with the introduction of the coin board.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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