*gasp*! A liteside question on the darkside forum!

MadMuffin

Anyway, I gotta ask this and I don't have the guts to go and ask those liteside collectors. They can be dangerous!

I often see old European copper coins advertised as "colonial copper" - as having circulated in the US in "colonial" times (which appears to be the 1700s judging by the dates on the various coins). This goes for British, Swedish, French, Spanish, Danish, Italian (!) and even a few central European coins. No German coins, though! So - did all these copper coins really circulate in the US or are they just sold as "colonial" because genuine US colonial coins are pretty expensive?

Marcel

laurentyvan

I'm not sure "colonial" would refer exclusively to a coin that circulated in the US (although many certainly did early on) but as a coin in a colony of one of those countries. At any rate, you will find some people here very knowledgeable on this subject-just wait awhile...

nwcs

I would say most of them are colonial era. It's very unlikely to know whether the particular piece actually circulated here. I treat all coins of this type to be native to their country and not necessarily circulated here.

But yes, some of these coins did indeed circulate here. To my recollection, British, French, Spanish, and German coins enjoyed a fair amount of circulation and remained legal tender even for several decades after the republic was formed.

1jester

I don't claim to be any kind of expert on colonial coins (or anything, for that matter...), but I have to agree with Laurent in that there might be two different definitions of colonial that we're dealing with. One would be the actual colonies of the various European powers, and some coins were indeed minted specifically for some colonies, and circulated in these colonies. This includes not only colonies that make up the current USA, but others as well. In addition to those special coins, all coins were legal tender in the United States and areas that were to become the US, until 1857. So all types of coins from other countries did indeed circulate in the US. There is no way to know, however, if a particular piece did circulate in the States. But I do find it fascinating that many older coins could have been used by our forefathers. Kinda makes you wonder why such coins wouldn't be valued higher by US collectors.

shirohniichan

To my recollection, copper coins did not enjoy legal tender status, though many were used in trade in the colonies and early US (especially English and Irish coppers). Even US copper coins were not legal tender in early America. Silver coins circulated at a slight discount on the east coast (e.g. .900 fine 5.00 gram francs passed at 20 cents), while on the west coast they circulated at par with their closest US counterparts. I believe David Bowers wrote that francs were used as quarters in Gold Rush era San Francisco, even though their silver value was closer to 22 cents.

lordmarcovan

<< <i>So - did all these copper coins really circulate in the US or are they just sold as "colonial" because genuine US colonial coins are pretty expensive? >>



Both.

A truly staggering variety of stuff circulated in North America during the colonial period.

Generally, the Liteside definition of a "Colonial" is something that is listed in the Redbook, though.

An eBay seller can get away with saying something is "colonial" because it circulated in that era, as that is technically true. Usually it's hype, though- they use the term so you'll immediately associate the coin with the stuff in the Redbook, which is generally quite expensive.

A lot of the Redbook stuff is more expensive simply because it happens to be in the Redbook- that creates a bigger demand. There are plenty of other coins from the same era that are often just as scarce, which trade for peanuts, because they got lumped as "Darkside" coins instead of Redbook "colonials".

MadMuffin

Thanks for your input. I does not surprise me that many different coins did circulate in the States in that period. I just get the feeling sometimes that the term "colonial" is abused by sellers trying to make money - it's a bit like calling a Churchill crown "rare".

I remember a seller long ago who sold a very common Danish 1 skilling 1771 - a beat and battered specimen, but he stated that it had been dug up on a field that had belonged to his father. Though it may just be another variety of the "found it in the attic"-story it got me convinced. So either this coin was actually used in the States or it was carried there by Danish immigrants at a later time, perhaps as a souvenir.

I believe many European coins could have ended up in the US as memories of the homeland. Technically, that does not make them colonial coins - but it does explain why they are commonly found in the US. Many of the copper coins offered by US sellers as "colonial" are the common types and common dates, just like the Danish skilling I mentioned before. If for some reason people would put aside an old coin there is a good chance that it would be a common type and date.

Marcel

BigAlan

There was a serious lack of coinage in the early colonies so any "foreign" coinage would have been of use. One of the protest issues with taxation was the fact that taxes had to be paid in cash and there wasn't much available.

lordmarcovan

<< <i>I remember a seller long ago who sold a very common Danish 1 skilling 1771 - a beat and battered specimen, but he stated that it had been dug up on a field that had belonged to his father. Though it may just be another variety of the "found it in the attic"-story it got me convinced. So either this coin was actually used in the States or it was carried there by Danish immigrants at a later time, perhaps as a souvenir >>



Strange- I remember that same auction! I believed the story, in that particular case, because the coin looked like a dug example.

As a detectorist, I can certainly vouch for the variety of world coins found on colonial sites.

Here is my "Colonial Trio", all found on one site, quite close to each other.

(Sorry for the biggish pic- I made that when I was a newbie to the whole imaging thing.)

1960NYGiants

Also, some "mother" countries - France in particular - issued coinage for use only in their colonies. And of course the coins of Spanish America circulated widely and were legal tender till the mid 1800's.

Gene