Colonials including a St Patricks, anyone wanna try to attribute ?

Smittys

What Kind of Value does a St Patrick have in this condition ?

THanks in advance.

llafoe

STONE

3rd coin from the top looks like a contemporary counterfeit

mojorizn

Your St. Patrick piece is of the "farthing" size. The coinage was minted in two weights and diameters. The "farthing" size is much more common than the larger "halfpenny" size and actually circulted in the colony of New Jersey, it is believed beginning approximately 1667 to 1669. The "halfpenny" size has never been found archeologically in the U.S. There are like 140 different die varieties in the series but I don't have the guide. A good ballpark value would probably be around 500 to 600 dollars, though the damage on the reverse would be a huge factor to a prospective buyer.

On the Connecticuts, attribution is mainly determined by the arrangement of fleurons, cinquefoils and other designs that fall between the words in the legends on the obverse and reverse. Too tough for me to determine from just a photo.

Mojo

Aegis3

Why am I getting a bad feeling that I will actually be trying to attribute them?

Aegis3

The first Connecticut is apparently a 1785 Miller 5-F.5, listed as Rarity-4 in the Ford catalog.

NewEnglandRarities

The St. Patrick's in that condition would be netted in price quite drastically (obviously) for the hole and the scratches. I would put a value of around $75-150 with the problems. Without the hole and the scratches, the value would be closer to $900-$1200. The St. Patrick's is a Masonic Punch type, showing the triangle three dots after REX on the obverse. It is a major Breen type, but there are literally dozens of varieties for that major type. Good news is that almost every variety of St. Patrick's farthings is a R-7 (though very few people collect them by die variety).

The other three coins are all CT coppers, of which 5-F.5 looks correct without going to the catalogs for the first one. I am running out of the house now, but if nobody has attributed them later on, Ill give the other two a stab. They are quite difficult to attribute in lower grades as sometimes the major attribution points can be missing on lower graded pieces.

Dennis88

The Connecticut really has a funky nose...

Interesting coins though, even for what they are.

Dennis

MidLifeCrisis

<< <i>Your St. Patrick piece is of the "farthing" size. The coinage was minted in two weights and diameters. The "farthing" size is much more common than the larger "halfpenny" size and actually circulted in the colony of New Jersey, it is believed beginning approximately 1667 to 1669. The "halfpenny" size has never been found archeologically in the U.S. There are like 140 different die varieties in the series but I don't have the guide. A good ballpark value would probably be around 500 to 600 dollars, though the damage on the reverse would be a huge factor to a prospective buyer. >>


Go here for a good introduction to St. Patrick coinage.

There is quite a lot of information available now about St. Patrick coppers (see, for example, Newby's St. Patrick Coinage, edited by Oliver D. Hoover published by the American Numismatic Society in 2009). While Louis Jordan's information from the Notre Dame Department of Special Collections website is a little dated, it provides a slightly different version of some of the information posted by Mr. Mojo -


<< <i>Saint Patrick coppers were issued in both large planchet and small planchet varieties, which numismatists have traditionally called a halfpenny and a farthing. Recently this terminology has come into question, for contemporary sources only mention halfpence. Philip Mossman has explored this question further by demonstrating the weight of the smaller coin was too heavy for the normal 2:1 ratio of halfpenny to farthing. He concluded that both coins were halfpenny tokens. Most probably, the larger and heavier coins (averaging about 135.7 grains) were produced earlier. These coins are found in only about ten varieties. In all there are about five obverse dies and six reverse dies used in nine or ten combinations. This suggests a rather brief minting period, that could at a maximum have only extend over the life of the five obverse dies. It also appears these dies were in simultaneous or at least overlapping use based on the obverse and reverse combinations listed by Vlack (both obverses 1 and 4 are found with reverse B and obverses 2, 3 and 4 share reverse C). Extrapolating from what we know about later colonial American minting operations such as the Massachusetts coppers, these eleven dies would have lasted no more than one year (at the Massachusetts mint in 1787 eleven dies were cut and used to make about 90,900 cents and in 1788 twenty five dies were produced to mint some 210,000 cents).

The smaller planchet coin seem to have been much more extensively minted as over 120 die varieties exist! Such a massive die production would clearly have kept the mint in operation for at least two to three years. Not only were these smaller sized coins easier to mint but they were also more profitable. Mossman has calculated that based on the cost of operations and supplies the minting of the large planchet 135.7 grain halfpenny left the minters a profit of 49.1%. By switching to the smaller planchet 92.3 grain halfpenny minting profits were increased to 119.1%. No doubt the minter's enthusiasm for the smaller planchet coins led them to produce the gold and silver presentation copies of these coins for distribution to influential officials in return for their support of the weight and size reduction of the coin...

...The problem for American colonial numismatics is we do not know exactly which kind of St. Patrick coppers Newby brought with him. It had long been thought only the large planchet coins were imported since the West New Jersey legislation spoke only of "halfpence" and until recently only the large planchet coins were considered to be halfpence. Also, in excavations of colonial sites only a few St. Patrick coppers have been found and they have been the larger planchet variety. However, according to Breen, a significant number of the smaller planchet St. Patrick coppers have been discovered in hoards with later 18th century coppers (Woods halfpence, Rosa Americana coppers and George II halfpence). Based on this evidence we can assume the smaller sized coin circulated in the colonies but we do not know for sure if they were part of Newby's 17th century supply or if they were brought over later in the 18th century. >>

mojorizn

And if you want to sell the St. Patrick for $75 to $150 please PM me!

Mojo

Aegis3

I've worked out the third Connecticut to be a 1787 Miller 16.1-m, a rarity 5 or so variety. Confirmation would help.

I might try to get the middle CT done tonight, but don't count on it. I'm still wimping out on going through the Griffee/03C4 catalog to try on the St Patrick's, but even if I find a match, I still won't understand what that means.

Aegis3

I think the middle Connecticut is also a 1787 Miller 16.1-m.