What is the basic design type of the coin? Who created it? Some coin dates exist in more than one type. For example, among 1795 silver dollars there are the earlier Flowing Hair style pieces and the later Draped Bust type coins. Some 1866 half dollars minted in San Francisco are of the type without motto, and others are of the later style with IN GOD WE TRUST. Among 1907 $10 and $20 pieces there are more types and varieties than you can shake a stick at, and the same is true of 1909 cents and 1883 nickels.

Some designs were created by famous artists, .Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Victor David Brenner, James Earle Fraser, Hermon MacNeil, Adolph A. Weinman, and Elizabeth Jones among them. Coin motifs created by these people have an additional appeal if you learn about the artists themselves. Books have been written on the life of Saint-Gaudens, for example.

Forming a type set of United States coins is a popular way to collect. What is a type? From time to time United States coin designs have been changed. Whenever a major change was made, such as a new representation of Miss Liberty, the addition of a word to the inscription, a rearrangement of certain elements, etc., a new type was created. In this guide is a detailed evaluation of United States coins by design types.

Many coins, particularly older ones, are attributable as to die variety. Nowhere in American numismatics is this more evident than among large cents bearing the date 1794. Several dozen die varieties and combinations were created, some of them extremely distinctive. Dr. Edward Maris, a physician by profession and a 19th-century student of the series , assigned fanciful names to the portraits of Miss Liberty on cents of this date, including Coquette, Venus Marina, and Patagonian. Distinctive reverses found on 1794 cents include a variety in which the bar is missing in the fraction 1/100 and the famous Sheldon-48 variety with a circle of 94 five-pointed stars around the rim. John Weston Adams, a distinguished numismatist of our own time, whose collection I had the honor of presenting for sale in 1982, made a specialty of this particular date. He was not alone; over the years others have enjoyed the same challenge.