The Two-Cent Piece — the coin that gave America 'In God We Trust'

By 1862 the small change had simply disappeared. The Civil War had people hoarding anything made of silver or gold, and even the humble copper-nickel cent was being squirreled away faster than the Mint could replace it. Shopkeepers improvised — postage stamps stuffed in little brass frames, privately made tokens, paper "shinplasters" for a few cents. The country was running on IOUs and stamps.

The Mint's answer was a brand-new denomination: a fat bronze coin worth two cents. Mint Director James Pollock pushed for it in December 1863, partly to ease the shortage and partly to get away from nickel, whose hard alloy chewed up the Mint's dies. Congress agreed in the Coinage Act of 1864, which President Abraham Lincoln signed on April 22, 1864 — the same law that made base-metal coins legal tender for the first time, in small amounts.

But the coin's real fame came from four words. Back in late 1861, a Pennsylvania minister named Reverend Mark R. Watkinson had written to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, urging that the nation put God on its coins so that future generations would know it was a religious people, not a godless one. Chase liked the idea. The pattern coins read "God Our Trust"; Chase preferred a phrasing borrowed from the final verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner." When the two-cent piece rolled out, it became the first U.S. coin ever to carry In God We Trust — the motto now on every American coin and bill.

The man behind it was James Barton Longacre, the Mint's Chief Engraver, who cut both sides — the obverse (the "heads" side) and the reverse alike.

The obverse is dominated by a heraldic shield — the "Union Shield" the series is named for — propped against a pair of crossed arrows and ringed by a laurel wreath. Above it, a furled ribbon carries IN GOD WE TRUST. It's defiant, defensive imagery for a country at war with itself: the shield is the Union, the arrows its readiness. The art historian Cornelius Vermeule later called Longacre's two-cent piece among the most expressive coins of the Civil War era.

The reverse keeps it plain and practical: the words 2 CENTS inside an open wheat wreath, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arched around the rim. The edge is smooth (plain) — no reeding. The coin is heavy for its value because it was made of real metal worth something: 95% copper with the remaining 5% tin and zinc — bronze, in other words — at 6.22 grams and 23 millimeters across, a bit wider than today's quarter.

Here's the rhythm of the series in one number: the Mint struck nearly 20 million two-cent pieces in 1864, and just 65,000 of them in 1872. The denomination peaked instantly and then died slowly. Once the public got the small, convenient nickel three-cent piece in 1865 and the Shield five-cent nickel in 1866, the awkward two-cent coin had no job left to do.

That collapse is what makes the series collectible. The early dates (1864–1865) are everywhere and cheap. The scarcity lives at the end: the 1872 business strike, with a mintage around 65,000, and the 1873, struck only as proofs — collector coins made with polished dies, never released for spending — in two flavors, the "Closed 3" and "Open 3," totaling roughly 1,100 pieces. Those two dates routinely sell for four figures.

The other prize is the 1864 Small Motto. The first 1864 coins used a small version of the motto lettering before the Mint switched to the Large Motto used for the rest of the run. You spot it by the lettering: the "D" in GOD is noticeably smaller, and on the Small Motto the wreath stem under GOD is visible (on the Large Motto it's hidden). PCGS estimates only about 10,000 Small Mottos survive in all grades, with a tiny handful in top mint state.

One more thing collectors chase: color. Bronze coins start out bright red and slowly turn chocolate brown as the copper tones. Graders label a coin Red, Red-Brown, or Brown, and a fully original "Red" coin from the 1860s is genuinely rare — most of these spent decades in circulation or open trays and went brown long ago. A gem two-cent piece with full red surfaces is the real trophy of the series; the record price for the type was set by exactly such a coin.