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Double-die style struck coin from Ancient India, c 304-232 BCE featuring an elephant on one face and a lion on the other. Since that time, coins have been the most universal embodiment of money. These first coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow mixture of gold and silver that was further alloyed with silver and copper.
The Fugio cent, also known as the Franklin cent, [1] [2] is the first official circulation coin of the United States.Consisting of 0.36 oz (10 g) of copper and minted dated 1787, by some accounts it was designed by Benjamin Franklin.
Three cent pieces made of silver, and later copper-nickel, were also made around this era. From 1875 to 1878, Twenty cent pieces were made in the Seated Liberty design. A Three-dollar piece of gold was minted from 1854 to 1889. In 1878, the first Morgan Silver Dollars were minted; this series lasted until 1904 and was revived for several months ...
French-made coining press from 1831 (M.A.N., Madrid) Between 1817 and 1830 the German engineer Dietrich "Diedrich" Uhlhorn invented the Presse Monétaire, a level coin press which became known as the Uhlhorn Press. His steam driven knuckle-lever press made him internationally famous, and over 500 units had been sold by 1840. [12]
A lower quality of silver with more copper mixed in, used in Barcelona, was called billon. [77] The first European coin to use Arabic numerals to date the year in which the coin was minted was the St. Gall silver Plappart of 1424. [78]
These coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver that was highly prized and abundant in that area. In the middle of the 6th century BC, King Croesus replaced the electrum coins with coins of pure gold and pure silver, called Croeseids. [7] The credit for inventing pure gold and silver coinage is attributed by Herodotus to the ...
The most valuable blank coin listed on the U.S. Coins Guide site is a 90% silver dollar without a raised rim valued at $1,600 or more. The same type of silver dollar with a raised rim is valued at ...
The first known proposal for a decimal-based coinage system in the United States was made in 1783 by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and David Rittenhouse. Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, recommended the issuance of six such coins in 1791, in a report to Congress. Among the six was a silver coin ...