A Theory About the Engraved 1840-O Half Dollar

1630Boston

Why would someone do this to a coin?
Post your theory and in a while, I will post a theory that I found
[I will also give credit for the info I am using here]
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" It is a WB- 13, a rare variety.
On first appearance, it is a very nice original XF coin but close observation shows hand engraving on the reverse. The engraving says “13.244 grams” which appears to be contemporary."

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"Assuming it to be the weight of the coin, I weighed the half dollar with my modern digital scale and came up with 13.24 grams! Indeed it is the weight of the coin."

"Now for the hard part, other than to prove the weight of the coin for some reason, why would you want to weigh and annotate this commonly (then!) circulating half dollar."

ricko

Perhaps to compare the minted weight to the current state of wear to see what may have been lost. Or, compiling a list of silver coins/weights for bullion sale. Cheers, RickO

lkenefic

Perhaps this was the Quality Control piece that all other pieces were weighed against on a simple balance scale...

CaptHenway

@lkenefic said:
Perhaps this was the Quality Control piece that all other pieces were weighed against on a simple balance scale...

That is plausible, if we are talking a bank or some other exchange place where incoming coins might be checked.

1630Boston

The original question appeared here / by:
The August 2012 issue of The E-Gobrecht, the electronic newsletter of the Liberty Seated Collectors Club, pictured an interesting engraver 1840-O Half Dollar. Here are the images and accompanying text. Can anyone help? -Editor
Club member Brian Greer sent in an interesting 1840-O half dollar (imaged below).
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The possible answer that I found, by Tom DeLorey was:
Regarding Brian Greer's question about a curiously engraved 1840-O Half Dollar (originally published in The E-Gobrecht),
Tom DeLorey writes:
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One (remotely) possible explanation for the 1840-O half dollar with its weight engraved upon it might be that when the weight standards of the fractional silver coins were reduced in 1853, some person interested in culling out the older, heavier coins might have taken one of the heavier coins, weighed and marked it, and used that as his standard to sort coins against.
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This would assume that he was unaware of the Mint's much simpler sorting system of marking the new, lighter coins with arrows at the date, so that any coin without the arrows could be culled out and remelted. We as numismatists all know about the reasons for the arrows, but did the Mint publicize it at the time, or did they keep it secret so that the Treasury Dept. could cull out the older coins for its benefit?

nencoin

Maybe to compare it in weight to the already issued 1839-P of the same type, or to compare it to the previous type, the 1839-O Bust Half.

Edited to add: No, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Doesn't show enough circulation to be done in 1840 as an immediate comparison to the previous year.

DelawareDoons

Super accurate scales were hyper-expensive back in those days, so my guess is somebody had this one coin weighed on one then used it as a standard weight of measure for something they were consistently weighing.

DelawareDoons

Dupe.

Barberian

@1630Boston said:
Why would someone do this to a coin?
Post your theory and in a while, I will post a theory that I found

"Now for the hard part, other than to prove the weight of the coin for some reason, why would you want to weigh and annotate this commonly (then!) circulating half dollar."

I like the weight standard explanation. IMO, it's being used for some sort of comparative weighing, or perhaps correlating coin wear with gram weight. There was a brief three-year period between gold discovery in CA and the Act of 1853 where silver content value was greater than its face value where one might want to have inexpensive weight standards for silver coins. They could have used any object as a standard, though.

I don't like that they did that to a nice WB-13 (R5).

jesbroken

Remember one couldn't go online and check PCGS CoinFacts for the weight. This one, along with others, could have been at a bank or seller's counter when silver shaving was known to have been done. If a coin was extremely worn, it might have not been worth what the "Trade Dollar" was at the time.
Jim

carabonnair

It is interesting that the weight is in grams instead of grains. The metric system was legalized in the United States in 1866. Maybe this is a clue for when it was engraved.
History of standard weights and measures in the United States [National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce]

JRGeyer

@carabonnair said:
It is interesting that the weight is in grams instead of grains. The metric system was legalized in the United States in 1866. Maybe this is a clue for when it was engraved.
History of standard weights and measures in the United States [National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce]

That is a great point. If it was engraved in 1880 for example, you would have half-dollars with three different weights circulating that look the same to the eye. It would be unbelievable to find another half, post '53 with similar engraving, that may be the only way to truly prove that theory.

1630Boston

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@carabonnair said:
It is interesting that the weight is in grams instead of grains. The metric system was legalized in the United States in 1866. Maybe this is a clue for when it was engraved.
History of standard weights and measures in the United States [National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce]

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You may be on to something,
When I asked Tom DeLorey about his article / thoughts on this subject, 28 days ago , He said to me
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"Re-reading this just now, a thought popped into my head. Was anybody using grams in this country in, let's say, 1840 to 1855? I know that the nickel was introduced in 1866 at five grams even, and the 1873 weight changes were to round weights off in even fractions of grams, but in 1853 everything was still done in grains."

carabonnair

Thanks for this thread - I learned a few new things.
The Mint in Philadelphia received a standard troy pound in 1827.
The US participated in all the international conferences of the metric system in the 1870's.

1630Boston

@carabonnair said:
Thanks for this thread - I learned a few new things.
The Mint in Philadelphia received a standard troy pound in 1827.
The US participated in all the international conferences of the metric system in the 1870's.

I learned a few things also, coin related and otherwise, talking online with Tom DeLorey, he has shared so much info here on this site and in print.

CaptHenway

@1630Boston said:
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@carabonnair said:
It is interesting that the weight is in grams instead of grains. The metric system was legalized in the United States in 1866. Maybe this is a clue for when it was engraved.
History of standard weights and measures in the United States [National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce]

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You may be on to something,
When I asked Tom DeLorey about his article / thoughts on this subject, 28 days ago , He said to me
.
"Re-reading this just now, a thought popped into my head. Was anybody using grams in this country in, let's say, 1840 to 1855? I know that the nickel was introduced in 1866 at five grams even, and the 1873 weight changes were to round weights off in even fractions of grams, but in 1853 everything was still done in grains."

Just a WAG, but perhaps the coin was so carved as a de facto metric weight standard by some counting room clerk in a foreign country where the metric standard was used.