FREE: **1887 INDIAN HEAD CENT**126 YEARS OLD

The listing, **1887 INDIAN HEAD CENT**126 YEARS OLD has ended.

The Indian head penny does not actually have an Indian on it. It is, in fact, Liberty wearing an Indian headdress.

The designer of the coin was James B. Longacre.

Indian head pennies were minted from 1859 until 1909.

The first year they were minted, they had a laurel wreath on the reverse and were of copper-nickel composition.

The following year, they changed the laurel wreath to an oak wreath and added a small shield at the top.

Then, in 1864 they changed the Indian head penny again by changing the composition of the coin to bronze, and near the end of 1864 they added a small letter L (the designers last name initial) to the lower ribbon of the headdress.

The design remained unchanged after that, until it was replaced in 1909 by the Lincoln penny.