Flying Eagle cents have proved enormously popular over the decades. Designed by James B. Longacre, the Flying Eagle motif was actually an adaptation of the Christian Gobrecht/Titian Peale design used on pattern dollars twenty years before. It was Longacre's inability to engrave dies properly that led to the early demise of the series. A new design was needed where die opposition would not be a problem as it had been between the eagle on the obverse and the wreath on the reverse. It was this need that led Longacre to redesign the small cent for 1859, replacing the flying eagle motif with an Indian head. The original small cent design, however, gave collectors of 19th century U.S. coins a short, yet challenging series that continues to intrigue numismatists more than a century later. |