Purchasing Power: What Could an 1868 Aluminum Proof Set Actually Buy in Its Era?

It’s easy to look at a coin as just a collectible, but this was once circulating money. Let’s explore its actual purchasing power in its era.

When I hold an 1868 aluminum proof set in my hands, I’m holding something extraordinary: sixteen pieces of U.S. coinage spanning every denomination from the cent through the double eagle, struck not in gold, silver, or copper, but in a metal that was, at the time, considered exotic and futuristic. But what did these coins actually represent in economic terms when they were made? What could the metal in them buy? What did a laborer earn, and how did the price of aluminum itself compare to everyday goods and wages in post–Civil War America? As an economic historian who has spent decades studying the intersection of metallurgy, monetary policy, and daily commerce in the 19th century, I find the 1868 aluminum proof sets to be one of the most fascinating windows into the purchasing power and material culture of the era.

The 1868 Aluminum Proof Sets: A Brief Numismatic Overview

Before we get into the economics, let me set the stage with the numismatic facts. Sets of U.S. coinage struck in aluminum were prepared at the Philadelphia Mint in 1868. These are not, strictly speaking, patterns in the traditional sense. They are best understood as prestige sets — intended to showcase the potential of aluminum as a coinage metal and to demonstrate the Mint’s technical capabilities.

Four sets have traditionally been attributed to the Treasury Department, supported by correspondence and documentation. But as forum contributors have noted, five additional sets with unknown packaging have also been identified, bringing the likely total to around nine sets, with some records suggesting as many as fifteen may have been produced.

The documentation is remarkable. A letter dated June 6, 1868, from the Director of the Mint to A. Thacher, Clerk, reads:

“Order received June 6th 1868 from the Director by A. Thacher, Clerk. 5 Aluminum setts [sic] of the coins of the United States. Delivered on or before July 6, 1868. (4 setts as above, were previously struck and delivered on an order from the Treasury Dep’t. at Washington.)”

This tells us that the initial four Treasury sets were supplemented by five more, and the Chief Coiner’s journal records that the Mint purchased 50 ounces of aluminum at a cost of $100 — that’s $2 per ounce — from a supplier named Victor Bishop. That quantity was sufficient to produce all nine sets with material to spare. The cases themselves cost $36 (or $7 each for at least two sets that went to John Jay Knox, suggesting the $36 figure covered multiple cases).

Each set contained sixteen coins: one of every denomination struck at the Mint in 1868, from the Indian Head cent through the $20 Liberty Head double eagle, all struck in aluminum using regular dies. Today, these sets are among the most prized possessions in American numismatics, trading at auction with some regularity — Heritage has handled the Newcomer set, the Garrett set, and the Eric Newman set, among others. The provenance of these sets adds immeasurably to their numismatic value and collectibility.

The Price of Aluminum in 1868: From Precious Curiosity to Industrial Metal

To understand the purchasing power of these coins, we first need to understand the value of the material they were made from. This is where the story becomes truly fascinating from an economic history perspective.

The Deville Breakthrough and the Falling Price of Aluminum

Aluminum was not always cheap. In fact, for most of the early 19th century, it was one of the most expensive metals on earth. Friedrich Wöhler first isolated aluminum in 1827, but only in tiny quantities over years of painstaking laboratory work. By 1854, the French chemist Henri Sainte-Claire Deville developed a revolutionary process using sodium to reduce aluminum chloride, allowing — for the first time — kilograms of the metal to be produced at a time. As one forum contributor noted, it had taken Wöhler years to produce the same amount of aluminum that Deville could produce in a single day.

The impact on price was dramatic. Before Deville’s process, aluminum was reportedly in the range of $500 per pound — more expensive than gold by weight. By 1855, when twelve small ingots of aluminum were displayed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris at the behest of Napoleon III, demand for the “magical metal” skyrocketed. By 1859, the price had fallen to approximately $40 per pound. By 1867, the price in Europe was around $15 USD per pound, and by 1872, the U.S. price had dropped to roughly $9 per pound.

The Mint’s purchase price of $2 per ounce in 1868 works out to $32 per pound — which, as one astute forum member noted, was actually above the prevailing market rate. This premium likely reflects the cost of refining to the purity required for coinage, as well as the small quantities involved. Mint officers recognized that aluminum was abundant in the earth’s crust but extremely difficult to extract in pure form. They were betting on the future: they understood that advances in metallurgy would eventually make aluminum cheaper and more available.

What $32 per Pound Meant in 1868

Let’s put that $32-per-pound figure into context. In 1868, the United States was still recovering from the Civil War. The economy was in transition, and prices reflected both wartime inflation and the beginnings of postwar adjustment. Here are some representative prices and wages from the era:

• Common laborer’s daily wage: $1.50 to $2.00 per day
• Skilled tradesman (carpenter, blacksmith): $2.50 to $4.00 per day
• Schoolteacher’s monthly salary: $30 to $50 per month
• One pound of coffee: $0.25 to $0.35
• One pound of butter: $0.30 to $0.40
• One dozen eggs: $0.20 to $0.30
• One gallon of milk: $0.15 to $0.20
• One pound of beef: $0.10 to $0.15
• A man’s ready-made suit: $8 to $15
• A pair of work boots: $2 to $4
• A one-way railroad ticket (New York to Chicago): $15 to $20
• A year’s subscription to a newspaper: $4 to $8

At $32 per pound, a single pound of aluminum represented roughly 16 to 21 days of labor for a common worker. That is a staggering amount. To put it in modern terms, if a laborer today earns $15 per hour and works eight hours per day ($120/day), the equivalent purchasing power would be approximately $1,920 to $2,520 for a single pound of aluminum. The metal in one of these proof sets — while not a pound in total weight — represented a meaningful sum to any working person in 1868.

The Real Goal: Aluminum Alloys for Everyday Coinage

Here is where the economic historian in me gets truly excited. The Mint’s interest in aluminum was not primarily about creating prestige sets. The real goal was far more practical and economically significant: the Mint wanted to develop aluminum-based alloys for minor coinage that would be more durable and cheaper to produce than existing compositions.

This makes perfect sense when you consider the economics of the era. The 1867 aluminum pattern nickels — 200 of which were struck — were experiments in replacing the copper-nickel five-cent piece with something cheaper. As one forum contributor pointed out, the 1867 aluminum pattern nickels would have contained about five cents’ worth of nickel, which was precisely the reason aluminum was being considered as a substitute. The metal value of the coin needed to be at or near its face value for it to function as practical currency.

By my rough calculations, aluminum would have needed to be worth approximately $17 per Troy pound for the 1867 aluminum nickels to contain five cents’ worth of aluminum metal. At the 1868 Mint purchase price of $32 per pound (or roughly $26.50 per Troy pound), the raw material cost alone would have been more than the coin’s face value — clearly impractical for mass circulation. This is why the Mint’s officers were thinking about alloys rather than pure aluminum: by combining small amounts of aluminum with silver, copper, and other metals, they hoped to create wear-resistant compositions that could be produced economically.

These alloy experiments continued meaningfully into the 1890s, but nothing using aluminum proved superior to the metals already in use. Mint officers and technicians generally preferred binary alloys because most were easy to reprocess within the Mint — an important practical consideration when you are melting and recoining millions of pieces per year.

What Could the Face Value of a 16-Piece Set Actually Buy?

Let’s now consider the face value of the coins in an 1868 aluminum proof set. A complete set of 1868 proof coins from cent through double eagle would have the following face values:

• 1¢ (Indian Head cent)
• 3¢ (Nickel three-cent piece)
• 5¢ (Shield nickel)
• 10¢ (Seated Liberty dime)
• 20¢ (Two-cent piece was discontinued, but the 20¢ Seated Liberty piece existed briefly — though by 1868 the standard denominations continued)
• 25¢ (Seated Liberty quarter)
• 50¢ (Seated Liberty half dollar)
• $1.00 (Seated Liberty silver dollar)
• $2.50 (Gold quarter eagle)
• $3.00 (Gold three-dollar piece)
• $5.00 (Gold half eagle)
• $10.00 (Gold eagle)
• $20.00 (Gold double eagle)

The exact composition of the 16-piece set varied slightly depending on which denominations were struck in a given year, but the total face value of a complete 1868 set from cent through double eagle would have been approximately $41.94 — let’s call it roughly $42 for simplicity.

In 1868, $42 was a very substantial sum. Consider what it could purchase:

• More than one month’s wages for a common laborer (at $1.50–$2.00/day, working 26 days per month, monthly earnings were approximately $39–$52)
• A high-quality man’s suit ($8–$15) with enough left over for boots, a hat, and several shirts
• Over 100 pounds of coffee — enough to supply a small household for a year
• Approximately 300 pounds of butter or 400 dozen eggs
• A round-trip railroad ticket from New York to Chicago with money remaining for meals and lodging
• Nearly a year’s rent on a modest working-class apartment in many cities

In other words, the face value of one of these sets represented approximately one month’s total earnings for an ordinary working family. This was not pocket change. This was real money — the kind of sum that a family would budget carefully and spend with great deliberation.

The Metal Value vs. Face Value: A Critical Economic Distinction

One of the most important concepts in economic history is the relationship between a coin’s face value (its nominal value as legal tender) and its metal value (the market price of the material it contains). For a coinage system to function, these two values must be roughly aligned — or the face value must be supported by government authority and public trust.

In the case of the 1868 aluminum proof sets, the metal value and face value tell very different stories:

• Face value of the set: Approximately $42
• Metal value of the aluminum: The total weight of all coins in the set was relatively modest — perhaps 6 to 8 ounces of aluminum for the smaller denominations, with the gold denominations obviously being struck in gold regardless. But for the base-metal denominations, the aluminum content was worth only a few dollars at the Mint’s purchase price of $2/ounce.

This disconnect is precisely why these sets were prestige items rather than circulating coinage. The Mint was demonstrating a concept, not producing practical currency. The aluminum cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars in these sets had metal values far below their face values — a situation that would have led to immediate hoarding or melting if released into circulation.

The gold coins in the set, of course, were a different matter entirely. The $20 double eagle alone contained nearly one ounce of gold, which at the 1868 gold price of approximately $20.67 per ounce had a metal value essentially equal to its face value. The gold denominations in these sets were struck in gold, not aluminum — the aluminum experiment applied only to the base-metal denominations.

Inflation and Purchasing Power: 1868 to Today

To truly appreciate what these sums meant, let’s adjust for inflation. Using standard consumer price index calculations, $1 in 1868 is equivalent to approximately $18 to $22 in today’s dollars (2024). This means:

• The $42 face value of a complete set would be equivalent to roughly $750 to $925 in today’s purchasing power
• The $100 the Mint spent on 50 ounces of aluminum would be equivalent to approximately $1,800 to $2,200 today
• The $36 cost of the cases would be equivalent to roughly $650 to $790 today
• A common laborer’s daily wage of $1.75 would be equivalent to approximately $32 to $39 today

These inflation-adjusted figures remind us that the 1868 aluminum proof sets were not trivial expenditures. The Mint invested real money — the equivalent of several thousand modern dollars — in an experiment to explore the future of coinage. The total cost of producing all nine sets, including aluminum, labor, and cases, likely exceeded $500 in 1868 dollars, or roughly $9,000 to $11,000 in today’s money.

Daily Commerce in 1868: A Snapshot

To further contextualize the purchasing power of these coins, let me paint a picture of daily commerce in 1868 America. The nation was in the early years of Reconstruction. The transcontinental railroad was still a year away from completion. Most Americans lived in rural areas, and cash transactions were still often conducted in coin rather than paper money, which many people distrusted after the wartime experience with greenbacks.

A typical day’s shopping for a working-class family in a city like Philadelphia or New York might look like this:

• Breakfast: Bread and butter, $0.05; coffee, $0.03; eggs, $0.05 — total: $0.13
• Lunch: A hot meal at a workingman’s restaurant, $0.10 to $0.15
• Dinner: Beef or pork, $0.10; potatoes and vegetables, $0.05; bread, $0.03 — total: $0.18
• Daily total for food: Approximately $0.40 to $0.50 for a family

Against this backdrop, a single $20 gold double eagle — one coin from the set — represented approximately 40 to 50 days of food for a working family. The complete set, at $42 face value, represented nearly three months of groceries. These were not abstract numbers to the people who lived with them. Every cent mattered, and the difference between prosperity and hunger could be measured in the coins in one’s pocket.

The 1867 Aluminum Nickel Patterns: A Case Study in Metal Economics

The 1867 aluminum pattern nickels deserve special attention as a case study in the economics of coinage. As forum contributor RogerB noted, 200 of the 1867 five-cent pieces were struck in aluminum — almost certainly the entire mintage. These were Longacre patterns, not Shield Nickels, and they represent a direct experiment in substituting aluminum for the copper-nickel alloy then in use.

The economics were straightforward: if aluminum could be produced cheaply enough, it could replace the more expensive copper-nickel alloy in five-cent pieces, saving the Mint money on every coin produced. But as we’ve seen, the price of aluminum in 1867–1868 was still too high for this to be practical. At $15–$32 per pound, the aluminum in each nickel would have cost more than the five cents the coin was worth.

This is a perfect example of how technological change drives economic change. The Deville process had reduced aluminum’s price from $500/lb to $40/lb in just a few years, and it would continue to fall. By the 1880s and 1890s, new electrolytic processes (the Hall-Héroult process, patented in 1886) would reduce the price to pennies per pound, making aluminum one of the cheapest metals on earth. The Mint officers of 1868 were right about the future — they were simply a few decades too early.

Collectibility and Market Value: Then and Now

From a collector’s perspective, the 1868 aluminum proof sets occupy a unique position. They are not patterns in the strict sense, yet they are far rarer than regular proof sets. They are not intended for circulation, yet they were struck from regular dies and represent real denominations. They are made of a base metal, yet they are among the most valuable coin sets in existence.

Market values reflect this uniqueness. When these sets come to auction — and they do appear with some regularity, as forum members have observed — they command prices that reflect both their rarity and their historical significance. The eye appeal of a well-preserved set, with its distinctive bright gray luster and sharp strike, sets it apart from virtually anything else in American numismatics. Individual aluminum cents from the 1868 sets are catalogued in reference works, with eight examples documented across two die pairs. The 1867 aluminum nickels, with a mintage of just 200, are major rarities in their own right — a rare variety that any serious collector would covet.

For collectors considering these pieces, here are my actionable takeaways:

1. Authentication is paramount. As one forum member demonstrated with the composite image that has circulated online, not every photograph of these sets is genuine. Always verify provenance through reputable auction houses like Heritage or established dealers.
2. Condition matters enormously. Aluminum is a soft metal that scratches and develops patina easily. Sets that retain their original bright gray color and mint luster command significant premiums over toned or damaged examples. Even subtle differences in surface preservation can mean thousands of dollars in value.
3. Original cases add substantial value. As forum contributor MrEureka noted, the sets are “certainly less impressive when removed from their case and slabbed.” Complete sets in original cases are the most desirable format and carry a meaningful premium.
4. Provenance enhances value. Sets with documented pedigrees — such as the Newcomer, Garrett, or Newman sets — carry additional premiums due to their historical significance. A well-documented chain of ownership can transform an already exceptional set into a centerpiece collection.
5. Be aware of the die varieties. For the 1868 aluminum cents, two die pairs are known, with four examples of each documented. A ninth example would be a major discovery that could help establish the chronological order of die usage and add an entirely new chapter to the story of these remarkable pieces.

Conclusion: More Than Metal — A Window Into an Era

The 1868 aluminum proof sets are far more than numismatic curiosities. They are artifacts of a pivotal moment in American economic history — a time when the nation was rebuilding from civil war, when industrialization was transforming the economy, and when the very materials of commerce were being reimagined. The Mint’s experiment with aluminum coinage, though ultimately unsuccessful in its immediate goal, foreshadowed the dramatic reduction in aluminum prices that would come with the Hall-Héroult process and transform the metal from a precious curiosity into the ubiquitous material we know today.

When I examine these sets through the lens of purchasing power, I gain a deeper appreciation for what money meant in 1868. A common laborer earning $1.75 per day would have needed to work for nearly a month to earn the face value of a single set. The aluminum in the coins, purchased at $2 per ounce, represented a material that was still exotic and expensive — a metal that would not become truly cheap for another two decades. The $36 cases that housed these sets represented more than two weeks’ wages.

Today, these sets trade for sums that would have been unimaginable to the Mint workers who created them — sums that would have represented years of wages for a 1868 laborer. This transformation in value, from utilitarian experiment to numismatic treasure, is itself a testament to the power of history, scarcity, and the human desire to possess objects that connect us to the past. The collectibility of these sets only grows with each passing decade, as fewer examples remain in mint condition and their historical significance becomes ever more apparent.

For the collector, the historian, and the investor alike, the 1868 aluminum proof sets represent something rare and valuable: a tangible link to a moment when America was literally forging its future, one coin at a time.

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