Civil War Token huge die failures
Zoins
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Civil War Tokens are notable in that relatively large numbers have been struck with huge die failures. Sometimes I wonder how the die held together to do so many more strikes.
I recently came across these two 1864 Charles D. Horter tokens with different die states. Apparently after the top happened, they kept on striking these. Both of these are from Steve Tanenbaum's collection with the first also being owned by Q. David Bowers later. They were sold by Steve Hayden at different times and found on his archival site.
Here are two more in earlier, but still failed, die states:
- https://civilwartokens.com/Event/LotDetails/2686407/34-42336-a-R4-Raw-AU-Patriotic-Civil-War-token
- https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/lots/view/3-BN3MA/1864-conical-cap-head-our-navy-fuld-42336-e-rarity-8-white-metal-20-mm-ms-63-ngc
How many of these are known and what happened to this die? Is this a different die than used to strike the many problem free ones?
It seems like it would be neat to build a die state set for these.
Comments
I wonder how long it took for the makers of such tokens to stop using failing dies? Because these were made by for profit companies I suspect the quality control was dictated by how much the makers thought they could get away with.
The examples shown are quite severe but they are also uncirculated specimens. I have to wonder if they were saved for sale to collectors of that era. Are any circulated examples of that die failure known?
Are total population - or surviving - estimates available? Might look for one to add to my Navy collection. Cheers, RickO
Me thinks the public demand for coins forced quality control onto the back burner. Lots of documented accounts of coinage frenzy so people could make transactions. Did the die sinkers keep ledgers? This was kinda illegal right? Peace Roy
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Never saw one of those.
wow ... nice progression
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