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THE BOYD-NEWMAN 1792 SILVER CENTER CENT
I can't resist. Here's another highlight from the upcoming Heritage sale of Eric Newman colonial coins. -Editor
The 1792 patterns represent the founding fathers' first attempt to establish a national coinage that was efficient to use (unlike the earlier Nova Constellatio patterns). The Mint Act of April 2, 1792 authorized the establishment of a national mint to issue coinage for the fledgling United States and set down some specific guidelines for that coinage. Section 9 of the Mint Act stipulated that cents were to contain 11 pennyweights (264 grains) of pure copper. Unfortunately, a copper coin of that weight would be too large and unwieldy for practical purposes. The ingenious chief coiner, Henry Voigt, suggested including a plug of silver in a more appropriately sized copper planchet to create a coin with an equivalent intrinsic value and a more convenient size than the originally envisioned large copper piece. The silver plug was to be conical in shape and inserted into a tapered hole in the copper planchet with the wider top of the plug on the obverse of the coin. When the resulting bimetallic planchet was struck on the screw press, the protruding edges of the plug would be fused with the surrounding copper and actually receive part of the design. A note in Henry Voigt's journal indicates that the first Silver Center cents were struck on December 17, 1792 and Thomas Jefferson reported on the new patterns in a letter to President George Washington the following day: "Th. Jefferson has the honor to send the President two cents made on Voigt's plan by putting a silver plug worth ¾ of a cent into a copper worth ¼ of a cent. Mr. Rittenhouse is about to make a few by mixing the same plug by fusion with the same quantity of copper. He will then make of copper alone of the same size, and lastly he will make the real cent as ordered by Congress, four times as big."
The lot description includes an image of the 2x2 envelope the coin was stored in.
-Editor
To read the complete lot description, see:
1792 P1C One Cent, Judd-1, Pollock-1, High R.6, MS63+ Brown
(coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=1199&lotNo=30426&ctrack=2765472
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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