Silver Three-Cent Pieces Type 3 1859-1873 Coin Guide
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Silver Three-Cent Pieces Type 3 1859-1873
In 1859, little more than a decade after the start of the California
Gold Rush, new gold and silver bonanzas again captured the attention of
the nation. Vast deposits of the precious metals were discovered outside
Denver, Colorado and in the famous Comstock Lode in Nevada. Much of this
material wealth found its way to the mints in Philadelphia and San
Francisco, where it was turned into coinage. Unfortunately, the growing
distrust and divisiveness between the North and South would culminate two
years later in the Civil War, leading to the demise of precious metal
coins in commerce, and ultimately to the end of the silver three-cent
piece as a circulating coin.
Silver three-cent pieces (Type 1) were first introduced in 1851 to
facilitate the purchase of three-cent stamps. The initial composition of
75% silver and 25% copper was designed to deter hoarding and melting of
the coin as was occurring with the other 90% silver coins then in
circulation. In 1853, Congress lowered the weights of all the silver
coins, simultaneously raising the silver content of the three-cent piece
to 90%, although at a reduced weight. Since the value of the silver in all
the new coins was low enough to discourage hoarding, they circulated
freely along with the new three-cent pieces, which appeared in 1854. These
"Type 2" silver three-cent pieces featured the addition of three
outlines to the star on the obverse and arrows and an olive branch on the
reverse.
The modifications made to the Type 2 coins exacerbated problems with
striking up the design completely, and five years later more changes were
made in hopes of bringing up all the design elements. In 1859, Chief
Engraver James Longacre made minor adjustments to the coin. Assisted by
Anthony C. Paquet, Longacre retained the basic design of the large
six-pointed star on the obverse and the Roman numeral III in the center of
the reverse surrounded by the letter C, but he reduced the number of
outlines around the central star from three to two. In addition, he used
narrower letters and spaced them farther apart than on the Type 2 coins,
and he also reduced the size of the numerals in the date.
These alterations were apparently enough to make the tiny silver pieces
(derisively called "fish scales") strike up better than their
Type 1 or 2 counterparts. Unfortunately, after these changes were made and
the Mint produced a better quality product, the coins only circulated for
four years. The outbreak of the Civil War would again cause all silver
coins to disappear.
In the mid-1850s the Mint paid a price for bullion slightly above the
current market price, a practice that effectively divided the seignorage
(the profit the Mint derives from producing coinage) between the
government and the bullion owner. This meant that the amount of silver
coinage was not determined by the public's need for change but by the
amount of silver bullion sold to the Mint. As a result, there was a
tremendous surplus of small copper, copper-nickel and silver coinage in
the nation in the late 1850s-so much that small coinage was looked upon as
a public nuisance.
When the war broke out, this situation was radically altered. The
federal government suspended specie (coin) payments for paper currency in
1862, and the glut of small change was quickly reduced to a trickle, as
every coin with intrinsic value was either hoarded domestically or
exported to Canada, the West Indies or Central America. The production of
silver three-cent pieces during this period graphically illustrates the
boom and bust cycle of U.S. coinage. From 1859 through 1862, the mintage
of these small silver coins averaged 373,000 coins annually. For the
eleven years afterward, annual mintages plummeted to an average of only
8,171 coins.
All Type 3 silver three-cent pieces were struck at the Philadelphia
Mint. Over the fifteen years represented by the design, 1,581,490 business
strikes were produced. This is a misleading figure, however, as most of
these coins were produced from 1859 through 1862. After 1862, virtually no
silver three-cent pieces found their way into the channels of commerce,
and both the business strikes and proofs remaining on hand at the Mint in
1873 were melted in the summer of that year. As a result, business strikes
from 1863 to 1873 are great rarities. Consequently, few collectors are
willing to attempt completion of a set of business strikes of the Type 3
design, and today silver three-cent pieces are almost exclusively used as
type coins.
Oddly enough, some high grade business strikes known from this period
actually came from proof sets. Apparently, in the 1860s and `70s, the Mint
was not careful about the distinction between the two methods of
manufacture, and if a proof was not available for sets a business strike
was substituted. Proofs were made in each year of the Type 3 series and
the scarcest date is the proof-only issue of 1873, of which only 600
pieces were struck. At least two business strike overdates exist: the
relatively common 1862/1 and the very rare 1869/8. An overdated proof is
known-the 1863/2-a rarely encountered coin that is technically a restrike
and apparently produced in 1864, along with some restrike proofs bearing
that date.
When grading silver three-cent pieces, it is often necessary to use a
magnifier because of the small size of the coin. Wear first shows on the
top ridges of the star on the obverse and on the Roman numeral on the
reverse.
Counterfeits were made in large numbers during the Civil War, but the
date and lettering differ from authentic pieces, and these pieces were not
struck in silver but in some form of so-called German silver (a nickel
alloy). Dangerous forgeries surfaced in 1984 of the 1864-dated restrike.
These pieces allegedly originated in England and differ from genuine
coins, as the digits of the date are thinner and placed higher in the
field and all show a dent on the lower left corner of the obverse star.
When silver three-cent pieces were abolished by the Mint Act of 1873
few people noticed. The coins had not been seen in circulation since the
early days of the Civil War, and they had become redundant to the nation's
coinage needs when the nickel three-cent coin was successfully introduced
in 1865. Today, only numismatists remember these tiny coins and the
important part they played in the nation's coinage system in the 1850s and
the early days of the Civil War.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Diameter: 14 millimeters Weight: .75 grams Composition: .900 silver,
.100 copper Edge: Plain Net Weight: .0217 ounce pure silver
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bowers, Q. David, United States Coins by
Design Types, Bowers and Merena Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1986. Breen,
Walter, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins,
F.C.I./Doubleday, New York, 1988. Carothers, Neil, Fractional Money, A
History of Small Coins and Fractional Paper Currency of the United States,
John Wiley & Sons, London, 1930. Taxay, Don, The U.S. Mint and
Coinage, Arco Publishing Co., New York, 1966.
Coin Information Provided Courtesy NGC.
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