1/2 Penny - Auctori Plebis

The "Auctori Plebis" copper was struck in Connecticut in 1787, almost certainly by Thomas Machin's mill in Newburgh, New York — the same operation responsible for a significant portion of the lightweight, underweight coppers flooding the new nation's commerce that year. The phrase translates roughly as "by authority of the people," a claim no private coiner could legitimately make, yet the legal vacuum between state authority and federal monetary control made such assertions effectively unchallengeable.

Congress had chartered the first federal coinage under the Fugio cent that same year, but actual federal copper production remained years away. Private and state issues like this one filled the gap — and were frequently debased to maximize profit per planchet.