Star question

[CSdot]

I was just looking at my set and noticed that the Mint went from using a star with six (6) points to a star with five (5) points at some point in the first half of the 1900s. Seems Saint Gaudens kept with the six point star on his two coins, and the 1921 Morgan utilized six stars, but the others made the shift to five stars.

[CaptHenway]

Basically just a question of artistic license. Look at a Barber half or quarter. Six points on the front, five on the back. It didn't matter.

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

I actually think the number of points on a star is very important. I very intentionally chose the 9-pointed star (the enneagram) for my little logo on the left there for reasons I won't get into here.

[Conder101]

Before the Barber quarter and half dollar all or almost all the US coins had six pointed stars (the Stella had a five pointed star, and the stars on the 1794 starred reverse cent were five pointed but they weren't "official". The Barber coins had both types but after that almost all of the US coins have used five pointed stars. The Saint-Gaudens Eagle and double eagle used six pointed stars, and I think that is the last use of the six pointed star until the reverse of the 2006 Old San Francisco Mint centennial dollar. (Even then that was because it used a design that was created before the Barber coins were introduced.) I think everything else has used five pointed stars.

 

It may have had something to do with Heraldry. In Heraldry a "star" is six pointed. The five pointed figure is called a Mullet and is often used to indicate the third one of something, for example a third son might bear his fathers arms with a mullet added. As interest in heraldry declined the different star shpes become more and more a matter of artistic license.

[DWLange]

About ten years ago I wrote a couple of columns on the matter of stars on United States coins that may be of interest:

 

http://www.ngccoin.com//news/viewarticle.aspx?NewsletterNewsArticleID=187

 

http://www.ngccoin.com//news/viewarticle.aspx?NewsletterNewsArticleID=176