Metric & Stella Patterns (1874-1879)

The six years from 1874 to 1879 were busy ones in the engraving department at Philadelphia. The Mint had a new trade dollar to perfect, Congress created a twenty-cent piece in 1875, Mint Director Henry R. Linderman wanted the silver coins redesigned, and the silver dollar returned in 1878. Through all of it ran the idea of an international coinage, gold and silver pieces sized to match European coins or marked with their metric weight.

The twenty-cent piece came from Senator John P. Jones of Nevada, who introduced a bill on February 10, 1874, citing a shortage of small change in the West. Patterns were ready by August 1874, with a seated Liberty obverse modeled by the Philadelphia sculptor Joseph A. Bailly and an eagle reverse that Chief Engraver William Barber cut. Superintendent James Pollock thought Bailly's seated Liberty too close to the design already on the silver coins. After the bill became law on March 3, 1875, Barber struck more patterns, and Linderman settled on a Seated Liberty obverse and a smaller version of the trade dollar eagle. Barber's Sailor Head and Liberty at the Seashore obverses, used on twenty-cent patterns of 1875, also appear on trade dollar patterns of 1875 and 1876. In 1876 Linderman also paid the former assistant engraver Anthony C. Paquet for a trade dollar design.

The international idea took several forms. In 1874 Dana Bickford, a New York inventor, brought Linderman a design for an eagle that stated its worth in dollars and in several European currencies, and the Mint struck it in gold and other metals. In 1879 John A. Kasson's proposal for a coin matching the 20-franc piece produced the four dollar Stella, and goloid, an alloy of gold, silver and copper patented by William Wheeler Hubbell in 1877, was tried on metric dollars and on a $20 piece marked with its metal content.

New engravers changed the work after 1876. Linderman asked the Royal Mint in London to recommend a die-sinker, and George T. Morgan reached the Philadelphia Mint on October 9, 1876. In 1877 he and Barber made competing half dollars, and Morgan's head of Liberty, modeled by Anna Willess Williams, moved to his dollar prototypes late that year. When the Bland-Allison Act passed over the President's veto on February 28, 1878, Linderman chose Morgan's dies, and dollar production began on March 11. William Barber died in 1879, and his son Charles E. Barber made the Flowing Hair Stella and shared credit for that year's metric sets.

Many pieces in this tree were not design experiments at all. In 1874 and 1875 the Mint struck its regular dies, cent through double eagle, in copper and aluminum, and USPatterns.com believes those sets were made to sell to collectors. Fantasies such as the 1875 and 1876 Seashore obverses paired with the No Motto dollar reverse were made for the same buyers, and Linderman kept unique white metal pieces of 1875 for his own cabinet.

Judd numbers. The numbers come from Judd's reference book, United States Pattern Coins, which gives every die pair a separate number for each metal and edge it was struck in. The 1874 Bickford eagle is J-1373 in gold, J-1374 in copper with a reeded edge, J-1375 in copper with a plain edge, J-1376 in aluminum and J-1377 and J-1378 in nickel. A letter marks an addition: J-1440a and J-1445a are the white metal half eagle and eagle of 1875. Some numbers have moved. Paquet's undated trade dollar was J-1320 and J-1321 in the first seven editions of Judd and is now J-1475a and J-1475b, and USPatterns.com notes that Judd numbered the plain-edge and reeded-edge copper strikings of J-1458 the other way round from Adams and Woodin.

Other catalogs. USPatterns.com also gives Pollock, Adams-Woodin and, for the new designs, Taxay EP numbers. Pollock leaves some listings out: the copper cents of 1874 and 1875 (J-1346, J-1383), which USPatterns.com notes cannot be told from bronze without analysis, and the 1876 aluminum gold listings, which have never been confirmed.

Metals and edges. The metals are copper, aluminum, nickel, silver, gold and white metal, with goloid claimed for many 1878-1880 dollars. Gilding is common. NGC lists gilt copper strikings of many 1874-1876 numbers separately, and some gilt pieces have been sold under the wrong number: USPatterns.com found by weight that gilt "aluminum" three-dollar pieces of 1875 and 1876 (J-1437, J-1483) are copper (J-1436, J-1482). Edges are plain or reeded; the twenty-cent patterns are plain, like the adopted coin.

Die pairs. For the trade dollars of 1875 and 1876, read the obverse first: the Sailor Head (in 1876 one of four dies, with or without stars and motto), the Liberty at the Seashore, or Paquet's design. Then the reverse: the regular trade dollar with or without the berry under the claw, the commercial dollar reverse, or the No Motto Seated Liberty dollar reverse.

Mint errors among the listings. USPatterns.com classes the nickel cents of 1874 (J-1346a) and 1876 (J-1451) as mint errors on planchets meant for other coins, and the only confirmed J-1451a three-cent piece tested as ordinary copper-nickel.

1874

• Twenty-cent pieces: J-1354 to J-1358, Bailly's seated Liberty with an eagle reverse close to the adopted one or 20 CENTS in a laurel wreath, in silver, copper, aluminum and nickel.
• Eagles: the Bickford international eagle, J-1373 in gold (two known) to J-1378 in nickel, struck on thin planchets as wide as a double eagle.
• Copper and aluminum strikings of each regular die pair, from the cent to the double eagle, including the trade dollar and gold dollar.

1875

• Twenty-cent pieces: William Barber's Sailor Head (J-1392 to J-1395), Liberty at the Seashore (J-1396 to J-1406) and a Seated Liberty with LIBERTY incuse (J-1407 to J-1413), six designs from three obverses and four reverses.
• Dollars: the Seashore obverse with the No Motto dollar reverse (J-1420 to J-1422) and the commercial dollar reverse (J-1423 to J-1425), and with the regular trade dollar reverse (J-1426 to J-1429).
• The Sailor Head half eagle J-1438 and eagle J-1443, two of each in gold, with a unique white metal piece of each from Linderman's collection.

1876

• Dollars: four Sailor Head obverses (J-1461 is the one with the motto below the portrait) and the modified Seashore, on trade dollar planchets, and Paquet's undated design (J-1475a, J-1475b).
• Double eagles: two transitional designs with the coronet placed as on the coins of 1877, with the TWENTY D. reverse (J-1488, J-1489) or the TWENTY DOLLARS reverse (J-1490 to J-1492), one of each known in gold.
• Copper strikings of the regular dies in a partial set; USPatterns.com notes that such sets were not made again for eight years.

1877

• Half dollars: four obverses and six reverses by Morgan, five obverses and four reverses by Barber, among them a helmeted Liberty after a Gobrecht drawing, and a single design by Paquet whose dies were ready by March 20, 1877. Morgan's last half dollar head, of late summer 1877 (J-1509), became the first model for his dollar.
• The Sailor Head on the dime, quarter, half dollar and dollar, and Morgan's eagle, struck only in copper.
• The $50 half union: Barber's large head (J-1546) and small head (J-1548), each unique in gold and now in the Smithsonian, with copper strikings J-1547 and J-1549.

1878

• Dollars: Morgan's prototypes (J-1550 group) and Barber's design that early catalogs called his rejected dollar (J-1554), at least 50 pieces of them struck between December 1, 1877 and January 2, 1878, plus three goloid dollar designs by Barber.
• A wider, thinner quarter eagle (20.5 mm against 18 mm) and half eagles (25.5 mm against 21.5 mm), and normal-size half eagles and eagles by Barber and Morgan, two of each design in gold for the Director's office.

1879

• Silver sets from the dime to the dollar by the Barbers (the Washlady design, about 15 sets in silver and copper) and by Morgan, and Morgan's Schoolgirl dollar, J-1608, with 15 confirmed in silver.
• The metric and goloid sets: Barber's metric dollar J-1617, goloid dollar J-1626 and Flowing Hair Stella J-1635, and Morgan's set with the Coiled Hair Stella J-1638. The four dollar patterns hold the copper, aluminum and white metal strikings, and the gold Stellas are also in our Stella series as the Flowing Hair and Coiled Hair.
• The goloid double eagle, J-1643, often called the quintuple Stella: five struck by February 3, 1879. A copper piece missing the period between the 3 and the 5 in its inscription, J-1642, was struck first.

Much of this era was made for sale. The off-metal sets of 1874 and 1875 and the dollar fantasies went to collectors, and the 1879 metric sets were sold to members of Congress at $6.10 a set and later to collectors at $15. The first 15 Barber sets went to the House coinage committee, which then ordered 400 more; CoinWeek reports that the Mint's first 40 Stella sets came off a medal press in January 1880, that Congress asked for 100 more in March, and several hundred more 1879 Flowing Hair Stellas followed, so many coins dated 1879 were struck in 1880.

Some pieces left the Mint by other routes. The 1877 half unions were bought from the Director by A. Loudon Snowden, according to a 1910 letter from William Woodin's attorney, by depositing the bullion and paying the pattern charge; Woodin later owned them and returned them, and they reached the Mint collection on October 4, 1910. USPatterns.com suggests that Woodin received the gold Bickford eagles and the 1875 Sailor Head gold pieces from Snowden in the same exchange.

Many coins are held by museums: Barber's 1877 half unions and an original 1879 Washlady silver set in the Smithsonian, and twenty-cent and Bickford pieces in four public collections: the Smithsonian, the Connecticut State Library, the Durham Museum in Omaha and the American Numismatic Society. Counterfeits are known for the 1874 three-cent pieces and the 1876 three-dollar copper, and modern gold copies of the Bickford eagle usually carry the word COPY on Liberty's neck.