**GILFOIL COPPER**. Part 3———The Authentication!!
ambro51
Posts: 13,774 ✭✭✭✭✭
About 11 years ago I purchased an unknown copper coin. I wrote extensively about it on this forum and a colonial coin site. While all evidence pointed to the coin being the Gilfoil copper, actual Authentication was difficult prove. Now, at long last, I have made contact with the archeologist who was associated with Fort Crown Point and the excavations and cataloging recovered items. He was very familiar with the copper, and as I wrote in prior posts, was familiar with the copper token which they had recovered in the burned and destroyed soldiers barracks. This was the result of an out of control fire which reached the forts powder magazine.~~They had always felt the recovered copper WAS a Gilfoil copper, the only such one known.———In turn the retired archeologist I’m working with was able to have an archivist at Peebles Island, where the vast number of relics are stored, locate and Photograph the copper. **************As soon as I seen the photo, I seen the BROAD ARROW and the line below it. The copper has seen much corrosion and it Has been through a fire and explosion. I sense “improper cleaning” as well. We are arranging with the NY State Museum to do XRF testing very soon. The key here to matching alloys will be the complete absence of Nickel as a trace element. Prior to the massive copper strike at Parys Mountain, all copper England could get was from Sweden, which contained Nickel. This is what will be the final, final determiner…..but finding the coin that they excavated bears the same design as the copper I have pretty much seals the deal. ———-awaiting XRF and extremely excited!
Comments
It’s an interesting coin. When I look at your piece, the line across the bottom looks like a planchet station or bend that existed before “striking”. Then the arrow was punched over it.
What does the reverse look like?
We didn’t get a reverse photo, He’s going there at some point, when it goes for XRF. More photos then
Fascinating, looking forward to the test results
Who or what is "Gilfoil"?
Also, those horizontal lines in the upper right quadrant of your coin makes it look like a USA Bar cent that is well worn out.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
The specimen I own is the top photo. The coin below is the recovered piece from Ft crown point. These date prior to 1773. Here’s info on this piece https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Blacksmith.intro.html
Congratulations, Ambro! I know you have been at it with this piece for a long time. good luck with that!
Tom
If anyone else is as confused as I was by this "Part 3" thread, here are parts 1 and 2. (They are over ten years old and some of the photo links are inactive).
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/880878/part-one-the-facts-all-that-is-known-about-gilfoil-coppers-gary-trugdens-1987-cnl-article#Comment_10337540
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/880921/part-two-t-h-e-d-i-s-c-o-v-e-r-y-the-gilfoil-copper-is-in-hand