Your Opinion - Is the ANA Washington Born Virginia Die a copy die?

CoinNewBee

Ten years ago I bought a Collis restrike Washington Born Virginia (WBV) coin. I'd observed that the Collis restikes I'd seen in auctions didn't look like the original WBV medal that I had and I wanted to compare it to my original. Even to my novice eye it looked like the die it was struck from could not have been the original die, but a reproduction die made using an another worn WBV medal. I was able to get hi-def photos of the WBV die at the ANA museum that confirmed to me that the die cannot be original for a whole bunch of reasons some I discus in an earlier post, "Jacob Perkins Did Not Make the Washington Born Virginia Medal" regarding the physical dimension of that die. In this case the problem to discuss ____is that so many details that are sharp and crisp on an original medal are missing from the ANA die and the Collis restrikes. Examine the hair and the neck wrap of the die and restrike compared to the original medal in the photos below.

As I searched for information about the ANA die I came across two documents that are confounding and contradictory.

The February 9, 2002 issue of the E-Sylum Published an article titled Perkins Bank Bill Test, 1809. In the article Fuld states he visited the Jacob Perkins descendent Miss Adelaide V. Currier, of Newburyport, the great granddaughter of Jacob Perkins sister Jane. He says he visited in the summer of 1959 and saw the copy die of the original Washington Born Virginia die. He speculated that Perkins was given it as a souvenir that he then brought back from one of his trips to England.

That same year Albert Collis had written an article in August 1959 for The Numismatist about his purchase of the Washington Born Virginia (WBV) die from the Perkins family and making the restricts from that die he then marketed. In that article Collis says,

"Although the die has been in my possession for about two years, the plan to make some restrikes didn't get off the ground until January of this year."

The Collis article was published in August 1959 - that means Collis is saying he bought the die in 1957 - but George Fuld says he saw it in Newburyport in the summer of 1959, the same year. Obviously both of the stated facts in the articles they both published cannot be true. My money is on Fuld as the truth sayer.

The alternative to one of them just making up their story is that the Jacob Perkins brought back more than one copy die. Collis bought one and Fuld saw the other the Perkins still had. (??)

ANA Die Image (flipped for comparison)

ANA Die close up of detail of hair on the die

Collis Restrike medal close up of hair details struck on medal

Original WBV medal close up of details of hair and neck wrap from the original die strike.

The medal struck from a die cannot have details missing from the die that struck it. Seeing these images it's obvious that the ANA die did not strike the original medals.

I cannot be the only colonial coin collector to have noticed this and wondered about the authenticity of the ANA die.