Here's a coin I picked up some time ago. I think it's pretty neat: a replica of the famous 1793 Flowing Hair Chain Cent, which was the first officially circulating coin produced by the US mint. Of the actual coins, only about 36,000 or so were minted, and genuine specimens generally run into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars today. Mine was significantly less than that - and look, it's even a cameo proof! UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Coins of the United States in Miniature CU 1793 Flowing Hair Chain “Cent” (7.6mm, 0.38g, 6h) Minted circa 1980. Franklin mint, Pennsylvania Obverse: “Flowing Hair” bust of Liberty right, LIBERTY above, 1793 below Reverse: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA around chain containing ONE CENT 1/100 References: Numista pending Mintage: approximately 25,000 Now for the novelty of it. You might not guess from the above photo, but this thing is miniscule. These nearly microscopic coins were part of the “Coins of the United States in Miniature” set produced by the Franklin Mint c. 1980. These sets contained 146 miniature coins of various historic US designs, minted in gold, silver, copper, and cupro-nickel. You can find a few complete sets floating around on eBay. The level of detail and faithfulness to the original designs are astonishing to me, given how tiny these replicas are. And to give you an idea of just how tiny and detailed...the width of the fraction bar on the reverse could be spanned by just ten human red blood cells! Crazy. Here's what that would actually look like: Truly first-rate work by the Franklin mint! It's a cool little piece IMO. Let me know what you think, and if you've got any of these Franklin mint miniatures, or other micro-coins, feel free to post 'em up!
