Fugio Cents
Contract Coinage
Fugio copper cents, bearing on the obverse a sundial with the inscription FUGIO ("I fly," a reference to the passage of time; a motif borrowed from the earlier 1776 Continental dollar), and MIND YOUR BUSINESS, and on the reverse a circle of links (representing the colonies) with the inscription UNITED STATES - WE ARE ONE at the center, were specifically issued under the authority of Congress in 1787.
Coinage was executed at James Jarvis' mint at New Haven, Connecticut, using facilities earlier set up for making Connecticut coppers. The dies were engraved by Abel Buel. The Journal of Congress reported Saturday, April 21, 1787, that a committee recommended the following:
"...the Board of Treasury be authorized to contract for 300 tons of copper coin of the federal standard, agreeably to the proposition of Mr. James Jarvis, provided that the premium to be allowed to the United States on the amount of copper coin contracted for be not less than 15%, that it be coined at the expense of the contractor, but under the inspection of an officer appointed and paid by the United States..."
On Friday, July 6, 1787, a resolution was reported this:
"The Board of Treasury direct the contractor for the copper coinage to stamp on one side of each piece the following device: 13 circles linked together, a small circle in the middle, with the words UNITED STATES around it; and in the center, the words WE ARE ONE; on the other side of the same piece the following device: a dial with the hours expressed on the face of it, a meridian sun above, on one side of which is to be the word FUGIO, and on the other the year in figures 1787, below the dial, the words MIND YOUR BUSINESS."
On September 30, 1788, it was reported that:
"There are two contracts made by the Board of Treasury with James Jarvis, the one for coining 300 tons of copper of the federal standard, to be loaned to the United States, together with an additional quantity of 45 tons, which he was to pay as a premium to the United States for the privilege of coining; no part of the contract has been fulfilled. A particular statement of this business, so far as relates to the 300 tons, has lately been reported to Congress. It does not appear to your committee that the Board was authorized to contract for the privilege of coining 45 tons as a premium, exclusive of the 300 mentioned in the Act for Congress.
"The other contract with said Jarvis is for the sale of a quantity of copper amounting, as per account, to 71,174 pounds; this the said Jarvis has received at the stipulated price of 11 pence farthing, sterling, per pound, which he contracted to pay in copper coin, the federal standard, on or before the last day of August 1788, now past; of which but a small part has been received. The remainder, it is presumed, the Board of Treasury will take effectual measures to recover as soon as possible."
The foregoing indicates that by September 30, 1788, much of the anticipated huge coinage had not materialized.

Coinage Activities
James Jarvis bought a controlling interest in the "Company for Coining Coppers" on Water St., New Haven, as of June 1, 1787, and directed Able Buel to prepare dies for making over 34,000,000 Fugio cents. He then left the mint in charge of Samuel Broome (his father-in-law) and headed for Europe, to obtain facilities for multiplying dies and importing copper blanks over and above the 31 tons of federal copper stored at Water St. In his absence, Broome used the federal copper to make Connecticut coins instead. To avert suspicion, on May 21, 1788 Broome shipped some 398,577 Fugios to the United States Treasurer. Nevertheless, on September 16, Congress voided Jarvis, contract for default.
Abel Buel subsequently fled to Europe for two years; Jarvis and Broome went to Paris. On July 7, 1789, Congress found a buyer for its remaining Fugios, one Royal Flint, but two weeks later the value of all kinds of coppers collapsed to 25% of their former purchasing power, and Flint went to debtor's prison - being followed there three years later by Colonel William Duer, head of the Board of Treasury, who had accepted a $10,000 bribe from Jarvis to assure him the coinage contract. Numismatic Notes About 1860, one Major Horatio N. Rust, who 15 years later was listed as a subscriber to Crosby's Early Coins of America book, is believed to have "restrikes" (with thin links) struck in gold, silver, copper and brass at Scovill's button factory in Waterbury, Connecticut: the so-called "New Haven restrikes."
A large quantity of Fugio coppers, estimated at several thousand pieces, was for many years in the vault of the Bank of New York. As recently as the 1940s specimens were still available from that source, although by that time the hoard had been largely depleted. Most mint-condition pieces known today trace their origin to this particular group.