What is a “Fugio” cent?
April 25th, 2009
The Fugio cents were the first authorized coin. Unfortunately the contract to make them fell into the hands of James Jarvis, thanks to a $10,000 bribe paid to the head of the Board of Treasury. The issue was further complicated by a Jarvis employee who embezzled government copper to strike coins for Connecticut. The contract was voided, with a serious loss to the government, which received only 398,577 of the coins. There are - as is the case of most early coins - numerous copies of this coin, many of them dating to the 1960s.