Countermarked 1795 & 1799 American Dollars in British Royal Mint Museum
P0CKETCHANGE
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Just returned from two weeks in the U.K., where I visited the famous Tower of London, where the British Royal Mint was located for ~500 years beginning in the year 1279 (wow). There is a small museum there with a few rooms of coins, original dies, and machinery. In one of the display cases, I was surprised to see two 18th century US dollars:
(these are my own photos)
The display simple stated "Countermarked American Liberty dollars, on load from the Bank of England Museum"
Curious about how these came to be counterstamped by the British government so soon after the Revolution, I searched Google and this forum history to see what I could find. Lo and behold, there's a thread circa 2017 showing a different 1799 dollar with the same counterstamp.
There's some discussion about the counterstamped coins in the thread, and @BillJones had a few comments including his own photo of the 1799 dollar from the same museum. Why were these counterstamped? In short, there was a scarcity of coinage in Britain at the time, and foreign coins (mostly Spanish Reales) were made legal circulating tender—evidently, a few American dollars made their way over and met the same fate. Just five or six are known, so they are quite rare.
Here's a short post I found on e-sylum with photos of the same coins:
I also found a writeup about a 1799 counter marked dollar that was owned by Norweb. This one is different from the museum piece and the other 1799 dollar in the 2017 forum thread. And if anyone wants to go deep, there is a scholarly cited article on British counter marked dollars posted here.
Stacks sold a 1798 small eagle earlier this year for $120,000. Hilariously, they say the particular countermark is known as the "head of a fool on the neck of an ass". I guess there is some British history there that I'm not privy to. This 1798 small eagle is believed to be unique as a countermarked example.
Anyway, I thought this was all pretty fascinating numismatic history; hope it's interesting to folks here. If anyone knows more about these, please add to the discussion.
Tower of London outer wall from the (now filled) moat
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
Comments
Always one of my favorites!
Wasn't aware of the recent Stacks sale.. seems undervalued at $120k
😄
A more refined chopmark. Very nice.
Fascinating post about an unknown event to most collectors ( myself at the top of the list). @POCKETCHANGE, thanks for the information and photos. Was at the British Museum and viewed their coin display, but somehow missed this one at the Tower.
@P0CKETCHANGE, the "head of a fool on the neck of an ass" refers to the mark specifically on a Carlos IV Spanish Colonial 8 Reales, the most common host; the 'fool' would refer to George III (whose eccentricities/'madness' were known to the public), and the 'ass' is Carlos IV of Spain, who was known as a 'do-nothing king' that made a series of poor decisions that shook the stability of Spain's empire.
The British Museum also features a rare chopmarked Bust Dollar, donated to the museum in 199y by William Barrett:
The British counter mark article is worth a read. There's pics of lots of die stamps at the end too. Peace Roy
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Cool post thanks
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
The Bank of England issued these pieces to alleviate a coin shortage which had gripped England for many years. The most common response were the condor tokens which came to tokens for every day use and collectors’ items.
The most common host coin for these pieces was the Spanish Milled Dollar, most often the portrait pieces. The counterstamps are also found, much less frequently, on the four reale or half dollar pieces. Initially these coins had an assigned value of four shillings and nine pence. Later it was raised to five shillings which equals a crown.
The first pieces had a small counterstamp of King George III which was borrowed from the hallmarks are silverware. This piece was easily counterfeited, both on genuine silver coins and on counterfeit pieces. Britain had earlier created its own problem when it had counterfeited the Spanish pieces to undermine the Spanish economy during and earlier war.
A second issue of counterstamped crown sized coins had a larger portrait of King George, which was taken from the Maundy penny, This piece was harder to counterfeit.
An 1800 Maundy penny.
None of these counterstamped pieces were popular. There were two limrics:
"To get his coins to pass King George placed the head of a fool on the neck of an ass."
"Two heads but not a crown." This referred to the fact that the first counterstamped pieces were not worth five shillings which would have been a crown.
Finally the Bank of England put the Soho steam driven presses to work. They stuck the Bank of England dollar over the the host coins. The resulting coins sometimes showed some undertype from the host coins, but usually they didn't. All of these coins are dated 1804 although they were struck during the period from 1804 to 1811.
Although the Spanish dollars were most often used for the counterstamped coins, U.S. Bust Dollars, French ecus and Italian crowns were also used. These pieces are much rarer than the Spanish host coins.
The popular poem at the time was:
"To make the dollar of Spain
for 5 shillings pass,
stamp the head of a fool
on the neck of an ass."
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
I have seen it with the first line simply
"To make a dollar..."
Either, or both, could be right.
Great thread, BTW.
Very cool. I went to the British Museum but didn’t come across this one. But, there was this huge 15th century hoard of gold coins, which was arguably more exciting:
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
Oh, I did come across a 1793 half cent and 1794 large cent at the British Museum, with the provenance attributed to this collector:
Nothing is as expensive as free money.