1796-P Draped Bust

  • Category
    Draped Bust
  • Design
    Early Copper Penny (1796-1807)
  • Year
    1796
  • Mint
    Philadelphia
  • Mintage
    363,375
  • Designer
    Robert Scot
  • Composition
    100% Copper
  • Diameter
    29mm
  • Weight
    10.89g
Known variants:
Reverse of 1794

One major variety of the 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent (Penny) features the older 1794 design on the reverse of the coin. One way to identify this variety is to note that there two leaves (double leaf) on the top of the right-side branch. In addition: There are between 14-16 leaves on the left branch and between 16-18 leaves on the right branch.

Reverse of 1795

One major variety of the 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent (Penny) features the older 1795 design on the reverse of the coin. One way to identify this variety is to note that there is only one leaf on the top of the right-side branch. In addition: There are between 17-21 leaves on the left branch and between 16-20 leaves on the right branch.

Reverse of 1797

One major variety of the 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent (Penny) features the newer 1797 design on the reverse of the coin. One way to identify this variety is to note that there are two leaves (double leaf) on the top of the right-side branch. In addition: There are a total of 16 leaves on the left branch and 19 leaves on the right branch.

LIHERTY Error

One major variety deals with the word 'LIBERTY' on the obverse of the 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent (Penny). This coin was once struck at an earlier time with a mistakenly inverted letter "B" in the die. The coin was struck a second time once this mistake was corrected. So it's actually a "B" struck over an inverted "B". This resulted in two extra serifs appear on the right side of the "B" and this makes it look partially like a letter "H". The end result was the word looked somewhat like the misspelling: "LIHERTY".

Stemless Wreath Reverse

This is an extremely rare and valuable variety of the 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent (Penny). Normally the reverse of the coin depicts two stems of the two wreaths at the bottom of the coin near the 1/100 fractional. In this case the stems are missing. The differences between the stems vs stemless coins are depicted above in the example image and the arrows point out where the stems should be. Only 3 of these coins are known to exist!