JANUARY 21
1867•U.S. Mint Removes Rays From the Shield Nickel
2003•2003 Kennedy Half Dollar Sales Announced
The U.S. Mint Removes the Rays From the Shield Nickel
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January 21 • American Coin History Calendar
The Shield nickel was barely a year old when the Mint decided its reverse was too difficult to strike. On January 21, 1867, Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch approved a revised design that eliminated the rays placed between the thirteen stars. The change created two distinct 1867 Shield nickel types—With Rays and Without Rays—and illustrates a recurring truth of coin design: artwork that looks impressive on paper must still survive the violence of mass production in metal.
A One-Year-Old Coin Already Needed Fixing
The copper-nickel five-cent coin had been authorized only in 1866.
Its obverse featured a large shield. Its original reverse showed a numeral 5 surrounded by thirteen stars, with rays projecting between the stars.
The design was bold and unmistakably national.
It was also troublesome.
Mint officials found the coin difficult to strike properly, and the dies failed too quickly. By January 1867, the institution was ready to simplify the reverse.
Contemporary Treasury correspondence dated January 21, 1867 records Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch's approval of the revised reverse.
The rays were to be removed.
Subsequent Shield nickels would be struck with thirteen stars around the numeral 5 but without the radial lines between them.
Because production had already begun under the original design, collectors received two major varieties dated 1867.
The Shield nickel was born from the monetary chaos of the Civil War.
When war began in 1861, Americans rapidly hoarded gold and silver coins. As confidence deteriorated and metal values shifted, even small silver denominations disappeared from everyday commerce.
The half dime—the traditional silver five-cent coin—became difficult to find.
Businesses and consumers improvised with private tokens, postage stamps, fractional paper currency and other substitutes.
The government needed durable small change that did not contain precious metal.
Copper-Nickel Becomes the Answer
The Mint already had experience with copper-nickel alloys.
Flying Eagle cents and early Indian Head cents had used a copper-nickel composition, giving them a pale appearance compared with later bronze cents.
During the war, Congress authorized a two-cent bronze coin in 1864 and a copper-nickel three-cent piece in 1865.
In 1866, the five-cent denomination joined this new generation of base-metal federal coinage.
Congress authorized the new five-cent copper-nickel coin on May 16, 1866.
The law specified a weight of 77.16 grains, equivalent to 5 grams, and a composition of 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel.
Those specifications should sound familiar.
They remain the basic weight and composition of the circulating U.S. five-cent coin today.
The Shield nickel therefore established the physical standard that has survived for more than a century and a half.
The introduction of the nickel did not instantly kill the silver half dime.
The two five-cent denominations overlapped for several years.
Half dimes continued to be struck through 1873, while Shield nickels circulated beside them.
This created the unusual situation of two federal coins with the same face value but very different sizes, metals and histories.
Eventually the larger copper-nickel coin won.
Chief Engraver James Barton Longacre designed the new five-cent coin.
Longacre had already created some of the most recognizable coins of the nineteenth century, including the Indian Head cent and two-cent piece.
For the nickel, he used a shield motif closely related to his two-cent design.
The imagery emphasized national unity at the end of a civil war that had nearly destroyed the Union.
The Obverse Is Packed With Symbolism
A large Union shield dominates the obverse.
A cross appears at the top, while a laurel arrangement and arrows contribute additional symbolic elements.
The motto IN GOD WE TRUST appears prominently above the shield.
The date sits below.
To a nation emerging from the Civil War, the shield was an especially direct emblem of federal unity and defense.
The motto had first appeared on a United States coin only two years earlier.
Longacre's 1864 two-cent piece was the first federal coin to carry IN GOD WE TRUST.
Its adoption reflected increased religious sentiment during the Civil War and correspondence urging the Treasury to acknowledge God on national coinage.
By placing the motto above the Shield nickel's central emblem, Longacre carried that new tradition into another denomination.
The 1866 reverse centered a large numeral 5.
Thirteen stars surrounded it, representing the original states.
Between those stars were rays projecting outward.
The words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and CENTS completed the design.
Visually, the rays gave the reverse energy and helped fill the open spaces between the stars.
Mechanically, they made an already demanding design even harder to strike.
The problem was not merely artistic.
Nickel is hard.
A 75-percent-copper, 25-percent-nickel alloy is tougher to strike than softer silver or gold alloys and requires substantial pressure to force metal into the recesses of the dies.
That pressure accelerates die wear and breakage.
The Shield nickel's intricate relief compounded the problem.
The Mint found itself producing coins that could be weakly struck while simultaneously consuming dies at an unacceptable rate.
Opposing Design Elements Made Things Worse
Coin dies must work as a pair.
Metal displaced by deep features on one side affects how fully it can flow into features on the opposite side.
The Shield nickel placed substantial design elements across both faces, and the rays added more relief to the reverse.
Weakness could appear in parts of the design even when the striking pressure was high.
Increasing pressure was not a perfect solution because it could shorten die life further.
Shield nickels are famous for die cracks.
The hard alloy and difficult design punished dies, producing cracks, breaks and other evidence of mechanical stress.
For modern collectors, those flaws can be fascinating. They provide a visible record of the manufacturing problems Mint workers were fighting.
A crack that once represented an operational nuisance can now help specialists identify a particular die state or marriage.
Rather than abandon the coin, Mint officials simplified it.
Removing the rays reduced the amount of reverse detail that had to be brought up during the strike.
The thirteen stars remained, preserving the core composition.
The numeral 5 remained dominant.
The revised coin looked cleaner and was easier to manufacture.
McCulloch's January 21 approval made the change official.
The first Shield nickels struck in 1867 retained the original reverse.
Collectors call these 1867 With Rays nickels.
The rays are obvious once a collector knows where to look: narrow projections occupy the spaces between the stars surrounding the central 5.
Because the design was changed early in the year, With Rays pieces are substantially scarcer than the later Without Rays type.
After the redesign, production continued with the simplified reverse.
These coins are known as 1867 Without Rays.
The stars remain, but the spaces between them are open.
This became the basic reverse format used for the remainder of the Shield nickel series.
The two varieties make 1867 particularly appealing to type collectors because a single date captures the design transition.
1866 and 1867 Tell the Whole Rays Story
All regular 1866 Shield nickels use the With Rays reverse.
In 1867, both styles appear.
From the later 1867 production through the end of the series in 1883, regular Shield nickels use the Without Rays style.
That makes the ray design a short-lived feature even though it is one of the most recognizable characteristics associated with the type.
Every Shield nickel was struck at Philadelphia.
There were branch mints operating elsewhere during parts of the series, but they did not produce Shield nickels.
Consequently, the coins carry no mint mark.
For collectors accustomed to searching for a P, D, S or other letter, the absence is not a variety. Philadelphia was simply the only facility making them.
The word nickel eventually became the everyday American name for the five-cent denomination.
That nickname comes from the metal alloy, not from the value.
The Shield nickel was the first regular five-cent U.S. coin made from the copper-nickel alloy that inspired the name.
Before 1866, a five-cent piece was a silver half dime.
Afterward, “nickel” gradually became synonymous with five cents.
Despite the name, a nickel is not mostly nickel.
The Shield nickel contained 25 percent nickel and 75 percent copper.
The same is true of the standard modern Jefferson nickel.
Nickel's presence dramatically changes the alloy's color and hardness even though copper is the dominant metal by weight.
This is why the denomination could look silvery without containing silver.
Five Grams Then, Five Grams Now
The continuity is remarkable.
An 1866 Shield nickel was specified at five grams.
A modern Jefferson nickel is also specified at five grams.
Both use the same 75/25 copper-nickel ratio.
The designs, manufacturing technology and nation around the coin have changed dramatically, but the basic metallic standard established during Reconstruction remains recognizable today.
The new five-cent coin was needed in large numbers.
Millions of Shield nickels were produced during the early years as the country rebuilt its circulating coin supply after wartime hoarding.
The denomination filled a practical role that fractional paper currency and private substitutes had temporarily occupied.
Base-metal coinage was becoming a permanent part of the American monetary system.
Removing the rays improved production, but the Shield nickel never became an easy coin to manufacture.
Die problems continued throughout the series.
Weak strikes, die cracks and other imperfections are common enough that specialists study them in detail.
The design lasted through 1883, giving it a respectable seventeen-year run despite its difficult beginning.
In 1883, the Shield design gave way to Charles E. Barber's Liberty Head nickel, commonly called the V nickel.
The new coin used a portrait of Liberty on the obverse and a large Roman numeral V on the reverse.
That transition produced another famous design problem: the earliest 1883 Liberty nickels omitted the word CENTS, allowing unscrupulous individuals to gold-plate some pieces and pass them as five-dollar coins.
The five-cent denomination had escaped one design problem only to encounter another.
The Liberty Head nickel was replaced by James Earle Fraser's Buffalo nickel in 1913.
Felix Schlag's Jefferson nickel followed in 1938.
Each design is dramatically different, but all descend from the same basic base-metal denomination created in 1866.
The Shield nickel established the size, weight concept and copper-nickel identity from which the modern five-cent coin developed.
Why Collectors Care About the Rays
The 1867 transition is a nearly ideal collecting lesson because the difference is easy to see and historically meaningful.
No microscope is required.
A With Rays reverse immediately looks busier. A Without Rays reverse looks more open.
Behind that simple visual distinction lies a story about metallurgy, die life, striking pressure, production efficiency and nineteenth-century Mint administration.
The variety exists because the Mint was solving a real engineering problem.
Artists can create extraordinary coin designs, but coins are not paintings.
They must be struck rapidly, repeatedly and consistently into hard metal.
Relief has to fill. Dies have to survive. Finished coins have to stack, count, circulate and remain identifiable after wear.
The Shield nickel demonstrates the tension perfectly.
The rays enhanced the design aesthetically, but they imposed a manufacturing cost.
The Mint chose production reliability.
January 21, 1867 records a small administrative decision with a lasting numismatic result.
Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch approved removing the rays from the Shield nickel's reverse.
That decision split one year's coinage into two major collectible types and permanently altered the nation's first copper-nickel five-cent design.
It also preserved a snapshot of how the nineteenth-century Mint learned through production.
The first design did not work as well as intended. The Mint identified the problem, simplified the artwork and kept the denomination moving.
More than 150 years later, collectors can still see that engineering decision simply by turning over an 1867 nickel and looking between the stars.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2003 — 2003 Kennedy Half Dollar Sales Announced — The U.S. Mint announced that 2003 Kennedy half dollars would be offered in rolls and bags.