BOOK REVIEW: A YEAR IN COPPER: THE 1794 LARGE CENT

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 9, 2026, Article 6

Bill Eckberg submitted this review of Robert Powers' new book on 1794 cents. Thank you! -Editor

After seeing the cover of Robert Powers' new book A Year in Copper: the 1794 Large Cent: History, Provenance, Attribution in last week's edition of the E-Sylum, I decided to purchase a copy. It is Powers' fifteenth in a series on various early US coinage types, with an emphasis on large cents (6 books). It's a strange book for a hardcover edition. It has no title page, no table of contents, no footnotes or endnotes, no ISBN number and no page numbers.

The most useful section consists of descriptions and good, fairly recent photos of each of the NC (non-collectable) varieties. NC is a term coined by William H Sheldon back in 1949 to designate coins that were so rare that many of the most advanced collectors were unlikely to own one.

From there, things go downhill. In discussing the founding of the Mint, he claims that Robert Scot "was the primary orchestrator of the activity at the first US Mint." He was not. That credit belongs to Henry Voigt, the first Chief Coiner and much more. The Mint opened shop in 1792. Scot wasn't even hired until November of 1793, after all of the 1793 coins had been delivered.

He then gives Joseph Wright credit for being the "First Draughtsman and Diesinker in August, 1793." There are no records that suggest that Wright was ever appointed to any position at the Mint or that he was responsible for the Liberty Cap half cent and cent designs. That credit also belongs to Henry Voigt, as evidenced by a 1795 report to Congress from a committee chaired by Elias Boudinot.

What follows are 41 pages (I counted, there being no page numbers) reprinting facsimiles of the cent section of Maris' 1870 book on the 1794s and then Frossard and Hays' 1910 book. Why? Because they're now in the public domain? We haven't used Maris or Hays numbers for many years, and there is far more information available from other, much more recent sources today than what Maris, Frossard and Hays told us. Besides, those books are available to all for free on the Newman Numismatic Portal, if the reader wants a copy.

His listing of prominent collectors includes George H. Clapp, who donated his wonderful collection to the American Numismatic Society and certainly deserves mention on such a list. He also lists William Strickland, who was not a serious collector of 1794 large cents; he purchased several 1794 large cents when he visited the Mint as a tourist, and his family kept them until 1964. They are wonderful coins, but they hardly consist of a real collection in the sense that we understand the term, today. Lastly, he lists Adam Mervis, who briefly collected 1794s. He had a great set, but he wasn't in it very long. How about someone like Dan Holmes, who collected for decades and had every variety except two in the entire large cent series? How about Sheldon? Or Denis Loring? There are many others that could be mentioned, but I think most students of the series would rank those three with Clapp and well above Strickland and Mervis.

The rest of the book consists of a page devoted to each collectable variety. The top half of the page gives the discover of the variety and date, followed by an enlargement of the variety from the Frossard/Hays plates that appear earlier in this book. That is followed by a very brief attribution description. Below that is a modern photo of the variety, usually with a one or two of very small insets intended to show the identification points.

Having commented on the history and attribution sections, what about provenance? Unfortunately, other than the Mervis NCs, there is nothing about provenance.

There are nice color photos of the varieties, but better and much more useful images are available in Chuck Heck's book on die states and the many auction catalogs that have been produced in the last fifteen years or so.

In summary, the book doesn't present anything that's new or advance our understanding of these important coins. His section on variety attribution is OK and worth a look if you don't have a better guide, but the sections on history are often wrong, and the provenance information is minimal at best.