Did America’s First Coin Start in a Philadelphia Cellar?
The 1792 Copper Disme does not look loud. It does not need to.
It sits at the edge of the American coinage story like a lit match in a dark room. Before the Morgan dollar. Before the Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Before the Flowing Hair dollar. Even before regular Mint operations began inside the first Philadelphia Mint, this small copper pattern helped test the money of a new republic.
Now, one of the greatest survivors has returned to center stage.
Heritage Auctions sold the 1792 Copper Disme, Judd-11, Pollock-12, MS64 Red and Brown PCGS, CAC. on April 30, 2025. The coin came from the Bruce S. Sherman Collection and traces its pedigree through Maris, Garrett, Partrick, and Sherman. More importantly, it ranks as the finest known plain-edge copper disme.
Only three Judd-11 examples survive.
That fact alone makes the coin extraordinary. However, its deeper story makes it legendary. This may be the first coin ever struck under authority of the United States government.
A Coin Born Before the Mint Was Ready
Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792 on April 2. The law created the United States Mint. It also built America’s decimal coinage system around dollars, dismes, cents, and their fractions.
The word “disme” meant one-tenth of a dollar. Americans soon simplified the spelling to “dime.” Yet in 1792, the old spelling still carried revolutionary force. It signaled a break from pounds, shillings, pence, and foreign coins. The United States wanted its own money. More importantly, it wanted money that ordinary people could understand.
There was one problem. The Mint did not yet function.
David Rittenhouse had only just taken charge as the first Mint director. The official Philadelphia Mint building remained under construction. Therefore, the earliest federal coinage experiments happened away from the future Mint walls. Numismatic tradition and modern research point to the cellar of Philadelphia saw maker John Harper at Sixth and Cherry Streets.
That cellar became America’s first unofficial coining room.
The Half Disme Gets the Fame. The Disme Gets the Mystery.
Collectors often call the 1792 half disme America’s first federal coin. That claim has strong support.
Thomas Jefferson deposited $75 in silver in July 1792. On July 13, he recorded receiving 1,500 half dismes of the new coinage. Then he left Philadelphia for Virginia and spent many of them along the way. Those tiny silver coins did real monetary work. They did not merely sit in a cabinet.
Because of that evidence, the half disme holds the strongest claim as America’s first regular-use federal coinage.
However, the copper disme occupies a different lane. It may represent an even earlier technical step. It served as a design and striking experiment for the 10-cent denomination authorized by Congress. Some numismatists have argued that the copper disme came first in the actual striking sequence. If so, this small copper pattern stands at the head of the federal coinage line.
That distinction matters. The half disme tells us when America’s decimal money entered use. The copper disme may tell us when that system first came off the press.
Adam Eckfeldt and the First-Coin Claim
The strongest human thread in the disme story runs through Adam Eckfeldt.
Eckfeldt later became Chief Coiner of the United States Mint. Yet long before that, he worked at the birth of federal coinage. According to later accounts, Eckfeldt said he had designed the first United States coin ever struck.
For years, some readers assumed he meant a 1793 issue. That does not fit the timeline. By then, the Mint had already struck Chain cents and other early federal coins. The 1792 disme fits the boast far better.
The disme’s obverse shows Liberty facing left with flowing hair. Around her appears the motto: LIB. PAR. OF SCIENCE & INDUSTRY. In full, the phrase reads “Liberty, Parent of Science and Industry.”
That motto captures the intellectual climate of the early republic. Liberty would not merely free citizens from monarchy. It would create invention, work, learning, and commerce.
The reverse shows an eagle in flight. The bird looks more confident than the awkward eagle on the half disme. It has purpose. It also carries a message. The new nation had chosen the eagle as a symbol of sovereignty, despite Benjamin Franklin’s famous doubts about the bird’s character.
On this coin, the eagle won.
Why Copper?
The 1792 disme exists in silver and copper. Today, collectors classify the copper pieces into two major edge varieties.
- Judd-10 carries a reeded edge. About 18 examples survive.
- Judd-11 carries a plain edge. Only three examples survive.
The coin offered by Heritage belongs to that plain-edge Judd-11 variety. It weighs 61.5 grains and grades MS64 Red and Brown at PCGS with CAC approval. No finer plain-edge example has appeared. In fact, Heritage described it as the finest of the three known by four grading points.
Copper made sense for experiments. Mint personnel could test dies, press performance, planchet preparation, and design strength without risking silver. Yet these copper dismes were not casual scraps. Their surfaces, fabric, and survival profiles show real care.
They were both trial pieces and presentation pieces. They were proofs of concept for a nation still trying to build the machinery of sovereignty.
The Mint Once Let This Coin Go
The provenance adds another remarkable twist.
Adam Eckfeldt reportedly obtained this Judd-11 copper disme for the Mint Cabinet at an early date. There it remained, a relic of the Mint’s own beginning.
Then, in December 1885, the Mint traded it away.
The trade went through H.P. Newlin, apparently for an 1826 quarter eagle that the Mint wanted for its holdings. At the time, officials did not fully appreciate the plain-edge distinction. As a result, one of the most important 1792 patterns left the national collection.
Dr. Edward Maris soon owned it. Then the coin appeared in the 1886 Maris Collection sale, where the catalog noted its plain edge and called it one of the gems of the collection. T. Harrison Garrett acquired it through Newlin, and it entered one of the great American cabinets.
After Garrett’s death, the family collection eventually went to Johns Hopkins University. Decades later, security concerns and institutional priorities led Johns Hopkins to deaccession the Garrett coins through a landmark series of auctions.
This disme appeared in Garrett Part IV in 1981. Donald G. Partrick bought it for $45,000. He kept it for more than three decades. Then, in 2015, Heritage sold it from the Partrick Collection for $1,057,500.
In 2025, the Sherman specimen realized $1,500,000.
That price reflects more than rarity. It reflects the coin’s position in the national origin story.
The Finest Judd-11 Plain Edge Copper Disme
The coin itself delivers the kind of presence that advanced collectors demand.
Liberty’s hair shows sharp internal detail. The eagle displays strong feather definition. The obverse carries two-tone red-brown color, while the reverse shows medium brown surfaces with olive accents. The strike gives the design unusual clarity for 18th-century experimental coinage.
The plain edge also matters. The Mint tested different edge treatments in 1792. Reeded edges helped deter clipping on precious-metal coins. However, copper test pieces allowed Mint personnel to compare the practical and visual results of different formats.
In Judd-11, that test survives in only three known coins.
One sits at MS64 Red and Brown with CAC approval. Another grades around Mint State. A third shows Uncirculated sharpness but severe obverse cuts. Therefore, the Sherman-Partrick-Garrett-Maris specimen stands alone at the top.
A Small Coin With a Nation Inside It
The 1792 Copper Disme forces collectors to confront a thrilling question: What counts as the first United States coin?
If we mean a documented silver issue that Jefferson received, spent, and placed into circulation, the 1792 half disme makes the strongest case.
However, if we mean the first experimental coin struck under federal authority to test the denominations created by the Mint Act, then the copper disme demands serious consideration.
That debate does not weaken the coin. Instead, it makes the coin more important.
The disme came from a moment when the United States had laws, officers, and ideals, but not yet a working Mint. It came from a cellar, not a grand federal building. It carried Liberty, science, industry, and the eagle on a piece of copper barely large enough to hold the future.
America’s coinage began with experiments. The 1792 Copper Disme remains one of the greatest of them.
And perhaps, just perhaps, it was first.
