Flying Eagle cent

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1857 Flying Eagle Cent - obverse

1857 Flying Eagle Cent - reverse

The Flying Eagle cent is a United States coin that was minted from 1857 to 1858. The coin was designed by James B. Longacre. The Flying Eagle was the first small-sized cent coin minted in the US, replacing the earlier large cent. The obverse of the coin depicts an eagle in flight, a unique subject for the obverse of American coins. The reverse of the coin has the words ONE CENT surrounded by a wreath, similar to the reverse on the later Indian Head cent. The United States Mint in Philadelphia struck between 1000 and 2000 Flying Eagle cents in 1856 as pattern pieces, a way to show influential congressmen and senators what these coins would look like. These 1856 Flying Eagle Cents were supposed to have been returned to the Mint and destroyed as they had not been intended for release to the public, but some managed to escape destruction. The 1856 coins are quite rare and valuable. In 1858, there was a "large letter" and "small letter" variety produced, with different punches used to letter "United States of America" on two sets of dies. An easy way to tell the difference between large-letter and small-letter varieties is to look at the word 'America'. In the large letter variety, the letters A and M are joined, whereas in the small letter they are not.

Both the Flying Eagle Cent and Indian Head cents minted from 1859 to 1864 were struck in an alloy of 88% copper and 12% nickel, giving the coins a much whiter sheen than contemporary one-cent pieces. The nickel five-cent coin would not begin production until 1866, and so these nickel-alloy one-cent pieces were slangily known as "nickels".

The early demise of the series was the result of two things. First of all, two high points of the coin were in the same area on each side of the coin, so that when they were struck, it caused a weakness in strike on those points. The second thing was that Longacre could not carve out the dies properly, as he was mostly a painter, not a sculptor.