1909-S Indian Head Cents (1859-1909)

Intriguing History

By 1909, the Progressive Era was in full swing -- Theodore Roosevelt's reforms gave way to Taft's, muckraking journalists exposed corporate abuses, and the country capped the era in 1913 by creating the Federal Reserve and ratifying the income tax amendment, reshaping American finance for good. This Indian Head cent, designed by James B. Longacre, carried small change through exactly this stretch of American history for half a century. This one came from the San Francisco Mint, opened in 1854 to coin the flood of West Coast bullion.