The 1793 Chain cents are numismatic Americana at their finest. After pattern coinage in 1792, the first federal coins made for general circulation at the new Mint were struck in February of 1793 and delivered by the coiner in early March. The pieces were put into circulation, with no known numismatic attention paid to them. Indeed, the number of people seriously interested in numismatics in the United States at that time could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and these gentlemen mainly concerned themselves with earlier and classic issues.

A newspaper article at the time stated that the Chain motif on the back was but "an ill omen for Liberty," certainly not symbolic of our nation. No doubt for this reason the design was soon revised, indeed completely. The Chain cents are struck in rather low relief, whereas their successors, the Wreath cents, are in dramatic high relief, more so than any other large copper cent issue.

Over the years the cents of 1793 have had special place in the hearts of numismatists. Indeed, the first photographic plate printed in The American Journal of Numismatics in 1869 was a panel of cents of this year gathered from various collections. Ever since numismatics became a widely popular hobby in 1857-1858, the ownership of a 1793 cent has been a badge of distinction. Year in and year out, generation after generation, the demand has increased. It is remarkable to state that the price progression has been steadily upward -- and if measured at intervals of, say, a decade, there has been no regression! Probably few fields of collecting/investing can make such a claim.

Today, the typical 1793 Chain cent to appear on the market ranges in grade from Good to Fine, punctuated by an occasional VF, and an even more occasional EF. An example at the AU level would attract much excitement.

Chain “AMERI” Cent

“The American cents (says a letter from Newark) do not answer our expectation. The chain on the reverse is but a bad omen for liberty, and liberty herself appears to be in a fright - May she not justly cry out in the worlds of the Apostle, ‘Alexander the copper smith hath done me much harm, the Lord reward him according to his works’” ?— The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 20, 1793

The concept of ordinality is defined by the notion that every sequence of two or more items begins with the first. Just as evidently, just as basically, the sequence of American cents begins with Sheldon-1, the Chain AMERI. of 1793.

History is especially fond of firsts. We honor George Washington above all other presidents, Lewis and Clark above all other explorers to the West, and the Wright brothers above all other aviators. The Chain AMERI. is the numismatic cognate: the first American cent, the beginning of the longest series in American coinage, the most basic building block of our now mighty monetary system. While pattern issues were struck in 1792 in trivial quantities, the Sheldon-1 Chain cent was the first to push across the frontier of the Mint’s doorstep and explore the trials of circulation. Most did their job exceedingly well, leaving precious few in high grade today.
The historical keystone in any American cent collection, the Chain AMERI. cent of 1793 represents a sea change in American monetary history. It was the first large scale production of the United States Mint in any metal. While 1792 half dismes are now generally thought to have been struck for circulation rather than serving exclusively as patterns, their initial mintage was a paltry 1,500 pieces, all coined outside the Mint. Some evidence suggests another, smaller production run was coined inside the Mint later in 1792, but even the most aggressive mintage estimate for the half dismes is dwarfed by that of the Chain cent. More than 36,000 Chain cents were coined, of which Breen suggests about 6,350 were this variety, though pinpointing mintage figures for individual die marriages based upon delivery data and survivorship estimates is tricky at best and utter guesswork at worst.

The Chain design was first struck at the Philadelphia Mint in late February 1793. By April of that year, the design had been changed entirely, yielding to a more elegant depiction of Liberty on the obverse and a wreath on the reverse. The reason for this quick change is not known, but complaints like the one that appeared in Philadelphia newspapers in late March could not have helped. The notices spread quickly throughout the Northeast after their first publication on March 19, 1793, complaining that “the chain on the reverse is but a bad omen for liberty, and liberty herself appears to be in a fright.” Blame was laid at the feet of “Alexander the coppersmith,” a reference to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was not a man who handled criticism particularly well, especially when the appropriate target of the criticism was an institution overseen by his rival at the State Department, Thomas Jefferson. The March 1793 Chain cent quote was first published numismatically in 1859, appearing in Historical Magazine in February of that year.

Modern scholars don’t know who first found a Chain AMERI. and determined that it was a distinct variety from other Chain cents, but we do know collectors have placed a high value on the first American cents for a very long time. James Morris, a storekeeper in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, kept a diary from 1837 to 1844 that is now secured at the Berks County Historical Society. He recorded in 1841 that he had assembled “a collection of cents beginning at 1793 and from thence to 1841 inclusive excepting only those of 1804 and 1815,” the latter of which Morris had no way of knowing didn’t exist. The first auction appearance of a Chain cent known to modern numismatists occurred exactly a decade later, at the 1851 Lewis Roper sale, where collector Ammi Brown took home an Uncirculated Chain cent of an unknown variety for a dime; it was described in the most basic of terms, “Cent, 1793.” In 1869, Brown bragged about his purchase in the pages of American Journal of Numismatics and confirmed that it was a Chain cent: “It was as fine as when struck, and probably had never been circulated. At that time but little interest was felt in American coinage, and this piece was knocked down to me for my first bid of ten cents.”

The AMERI. variety was seemingly recognized by 1855, when John W. Kline’s sale of June 12-13 offered, as lot 73, “Cent, 1793 different dies, p[ieces]. 4.” The lot hammered for 80 cents. We can speculate that the four varieties were the four principal types recognized by modern collectors: the Chain Ameri, the Chain AMERICA, the Wreath, and the Liberty Cap. Numismatic historian Joel J. Orosz, who has written extensively about numismatic auctions in the 1850s, suggests that lot 173 of the Pierre (sometimes anglicized as “Peter”) Flandin sale of June 6, 1855, represents the first published reference to a Chain cent. The lot was described as “Two 1793 cents, one with 15 links of a chain; and a cent of 1795, equal to a proof, very rare 3 pieces.” The first definitive reference yet located to a Chain AMERI. appeared in the Boston Transcript newspaper on March 1, 1859. Signed “A.S.,” initials of the well-known collector Dr. Augustine Shurtleff, the two-column article was entitled “About Cents.” It described 11 different die varieties of 1793 cents, along with bon mots about other dates in the series.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the D. Brent Pogue Part III Auction, where it realized $470,000.