One Cent 1858 Flying Eagle, Coin from United States - detailed information

The United States one-cent coin (often called a penny, from the British coin of the same name) is a unit of currency equalling one-hundredth of a United States dollar. The cent's symbol is ¢. It has been the lowest-value physical unit of U.S. currency since the abolition of the half-cent in 1857.

The earliest one cent coins were large and made of copper. Their designs changed relatively often; there were three different types in 1793 alone, the Flowing Hair / Chain Cent, the Flowing Hair / Wreath Cent and the Liberty Cap Cent - the latter issued until 1796, after which came the Draped Bust type (1796 to 1807), the so-called Classic Head Cent (1808 to 1814) and the Coronet Cent, also known as Liberty Head (1816 - 1857).

By the early 1850s, the rising price of copper led the Mint of the United States to seek alternatives, including reducing the size of the cent and experimenting with compositions other than pure copper. The result was the Flying Eagle cent, the same diameter as the later Lincoln Cent but somewhat thicker and heavier, composed of 88% copper and 12% nickel. The Flying Eagle cent was struck in limited numbers as a pattern coin in 1856, then for circulation in 1857 and 1858. Like all earlier cents, it was struck at the Philadelphia Mint only.

The obverse design of an eagle in flight is based on that of the Gobrecht Dollar, struck in small quantities from 1836 to 1839. The wreath on the reverse is derived from the Type II gold dollar of 1854, and the three-dollar piece of the same year. It is composed of leaves of wheat, corn, cotton and tobacco, thus including produce associated with both the North and the South. The cotton leaves are sometimes said to be maple leaves; the two types are not dissimilar, and maple leaves are more widely known than cotton leaves. An ear of corn is also visible.

The coin type was supplanted by the Indian Head Cent in 1859, initially in copper-nickel too but soon changed to bronze. In the late 1860s and the 1870s, the Treasury Department initiated redemption programs to replace copper-nickel with the bronze cents; thirteen million copper-nickel cents were retired by exchange for other base-metal coinage. By the 1880s, they were a rarity in circulation.