Walter Breen
(Mint record: 348,000)
Almost certainly some of the cents delivered during this year were dated 1805; some may even have been dated 1803 or 1804. The single reverse die of 1806 had already served for over 50,000 impressions of 1805 number 3; add the 348,000 reported for 1806 and the total approaches 400,000, impossibly high for this period.
An accident (not further described) disabled the cent press in April and a new screw had to be made and installed. Not until January 1807 was it again fit for coinage. This is evidence that none of the Mint's other four presses could have struck cents. To quote from the Director's Report: "It will be observed that but little has been done in the coinage of copper during the last year. This was owing to the cent press requiring a new screw and other repairs, which it was not easy to procure, and besides, it was. seldom that a hand could be spared, for this purpose, from the more urgent business of the Mint," (American State Papers - Finance, Vol. II, pp. 224-5.) According to this report, 341,000 cents were delivered in the first quarter, 7,000 in the second (evidently early April). This cent press was almost certainly the oldest one in the Mint-the one originally used by Albion Cox and Thomas Goadsby at Rahway Mills in 1786-87, by Goadsby in early 1788, and by General Matthias Ogden at the clandestine Elizabethtown Mint in 1789, all for striking New Jersey coppers. His widow Hannah Ogden sold it to the Philadelphia Mint in June 1794 for $47.44. Three of the Mint's other presses dated from 1792, the fourth (for dollars, medals, and hubbing) from 1795.