What are the dates and story behind the Keg of BU large cents found a while ago??
TexasNationals
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I remeber seeing a story somewhere, old news, about a keg of BU red large cents found some where. Does anyone have the info and dates of the cents that were in the Keg? Curious as to dates, finding, and the dispersal methods and price?
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I also recall this keg of 1817 and, I thought, 1818 or 1819 - 1820 it is - and I recall the bank story as well. There was also some hoard or other found in a basement in D.C. was it - found by some kids.....and another bunch as well. I guess I read about these here at PCGS?
Happy New Year!!!
Eric
Also, the "Nichols Find" of 1796 and 1797 cents is
traced to a quantity originally owned by Benjamin
Goodhue. This hoard, numbering close to 1000
was in the hands of a David Nichols of Gallows
Hill, Massachusetts in the early 1860s, who
reportedly passed them out at face value.
This information, and more, can be found in
"Penny Whimsy" by William Sheldon
~
"America suffers today from too much pluribus and not enough unum.".....Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
If you don't have any of the books mentioned above re: the Randall hoard, you can do an online search, as there is a lot of information about it. This assumes that by 'a while ago' you mean ~140 years. I'm not aware of any other BU group found in a keg besides this one. I think the Nichols find was in a cloth bag of some sort, and that was probably found prior to the Randall hoard.
Here is a small excerpt:
At some point after the Civil War but before the autumn of 1869, a keg of large cents was discovered under a railroad platform in Georgia. There is no proof that it was found under a railroad platform, but that is the story and most people are sticking with it.
In the period from 1869 to the early 1870s, there were lively communications regarding the cents and allegations that they were restrikes, which they were not. There were also offers to sell various dates. In his book Bowers even includes a copy of a letter from John Randall after whom the hoard is named suggesting that the coins were not restrikes and explaining that he had purchased them from Wm. H. Chapman & Co. In his tracing of the hoard, Randall says that it was originally from Georgia but found buried. He never mentions a railroad platform.
The Randall Hoard dates have sometimes been described as “spotty red” or “oily,” and in a hoard of this size there are likely to be some imperfect coins. Randall himself suggested this, saying some were corroded.
How many coins were in the alleged keg is far from certain. Estimates vary from 5,000 to 18,000. What is certain is that the 1820 large cent was seen as quite elusive back in 1859. In his book Bowers has the writing of Dr. Montroville W. Dickeson, who stated in his American Numismatic Manual that, in the case of the 1820, “The slight milling of the edges of these coins render good specimens difficult to be obtained.”
The Randall hoard, consisting of probably seven kegs of Mint State cents (likely over 1.2 tons of them), was found during post civil war
reconstruction, hidden under the planks of a railway platform in Georgia. The demolition contractor sold the cents at face value to a New York merchant
in settlement of a debt. The merchant tried to pass the fifty-year-old cents as change, but the public, accustomed for ten years to the smaller Indian
cent, refused them. Since large cents were not legal tender, the banks could and did refuse them too. Enter coin dealer J. S. Randall, who in a fit of
pure philanthrophy bought the hoard at 90 cents per hundred coins. Fifty years later these could be bought from the Chapman brothers, 'original bright
red' at ten cents each or $6 a hundred. They run more today. The hoard likely consisted of one keg each (at 15,000 coins per keg) of
1816, 1817, and 1819, and two kegs each of 1818 and 1820. Newcomb varieties attributed to this hoard are 1816 N2, 1817 N14, 1818 N10, 1819 N8, and 1820
N13, with smaller numbers of 1817 N13, 1819 N9, and 1820 N15.
Thanks