3 Pence - Higley Copper With Wheel

John Higley, a blacksmith and amateur metallurgist from Granby, Connecticut, struck these pieces using copper he mined himself from his own property — one of the few instances in American colonial coinage where a single individual controlled the entire production chain from ore to finished coin. When merchants objected that he had unilaterally assigned them a value of threepence, Higley simply changed the legend on subsequent dies rather than the denomination, a response that says something about the man.

The wheel reverse variety of 1739 is among the later Higley die combinations. Total surviving examples across all Higley varieties number fewer than fifty.