1792 Cent Pattern - J-2

Coin Details

Auction Record

$603,750 VF30 01-01-2008 Heritage Auctions

Description

Judd-2 designates the 1792 "Fusible Alloy" cent pattern, the second of three experimental cent formats tested at the Philadelphia Mint in late 1792. This variety shares identical dies with the Silver Center Cent (Judd-1) — Liberty facing right with flowing hair on the obverse, a wreath enclosing ONE CENT on the reverse — but was struck in billon, an alloy of approximately 90% copper and 10% silver fused together rather than mechanically combined. The fusible alloy approach was part of a systematic experiment outlined in Thomas Jefferson's December 18, 1792 letter to President Washington. After presenting the silver-plugged cents (Judd-1), Jefferson noted that Mint Director David Rittenhouse planned to produce specimens "by mixing the same plug by fusion with the same quantity of copper." The idea was to compare three methods of achieving one cent's intrinsic value on a small planchet: a silver plug in copper, a copper-silver alloy, and plain copper at the same reduced size. The alloy cent had a fatal flaw: it looked virtually identical to a plain copper striking, making it trivially easy to counterfeit. A merchant handling one of these coins could not distinguish it from a base copper imitation by sight or feel alone. This vulnerability was the decisive argument against the fusible alloy approach. The handful of surviving Judd-2 specimens typically display rough surfaces and weak strikes, indicating they were produced hastily as demonstration pieces rather than carefully finished presentation coins. The finest known example resides in the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection.