eople who collect early United States copper may end up developing a real love affair with one series of large cents or another, or perhaps with a series of half cents. The latter is often simply because there never really were all that many half cents, and today we wonder just what they might have been able to purchase. But by the time our young Congress got around to authorizing a federal Mint and producing any coinage at all, there had been several attempts to produce some type of coins for the newly independent nation. Today these are called pre-Federal
