Tonites NewP. Blacksmith/HTT Wood 29 Starbuck/Peck on Blacksmith 3 gram planchet!

ambro51

Wow What A Piece!! This coin is Wood 29, a handmade strike using the old HTT dies procured from the Trues. In a worn state these dies created, somewhere in Canada, several die linked crude tokens, some with hand cut eagle reverses. Rulau knew of these pieces and assigned HT 371, though it IS today better known using the Howland Wood numbering and it's inclusion into the Blacksmith coppers. Overall Wood 29 is an R6 piece but these thin planchets make up only a very small number of those, maybe a dozen. NGC obviously struggled to understand this piece, ignoring the very strongly struck portion of the legends...which show the state of preservation to be in the VF+ range, and somehow deciding on VG10.

ambro51

The dies are the reverse of the Starbuck HTT, and the obverse die if the Peck HTT. This is the Wood 29 and is a created mule using these two unrelated dies Both were struck as normal HTTs with their normal die pairings but later, the Bank of Canada uses 1838, these nine related blacksmiths were crudely made on thinner (and sometimes very thin) planchets. Like I said, this is the most complicated series I've studied!

ambro51

The Notre Dame site on colonial coins explains it....Next is a group of nine tokens connected to the diemakers Daniel and Benjamin True of Troy, New York. These include BL 40 - BL 48 (Wood 23-30), of which Wood did not know of BL 46. The tokens are linked through the sharing of two dies originally used to produce Hard Times storecard tokens in Troy, New York. The dies were the obverse of the J. and C. Peck Company token (HT 363) and the reverse of the N. Starbuck and Son Company token (HT 368); both tokens are known to have been made by the diemaker Benjamin True of Troy, most probably in 1835. John Lorenzo has recently studied the group and noticed the Blacksmiths made with these two dies show the dies is a worn late state of use. Further, Lorenzo observed the mules made with these dies are on light planchets that were crudely cut. These are very similar to the planchets used for the Blacksmiths but quite unlike the planchets used by the True's in their normal minting operation in Troy. Based on these observations Lorenzo suggested the two dies in question may have been shipped from Troy, New York to Canada after they had been used for the storecards. Interestingly, in his 1910 article Wood had suspected these dies had been discarded and sent to Canada. This suggestion had also been made by Oppenheim in an entry for a specimen of a Wood 25 Blacksmith in his masterful catalog of the Warren Baker Collection (p. 109, entry 1063). Nevertheless, many numismatists of the Hard Times token series have regularly attributed these coins to that series. As recently as 1997 they were listed in the second edition of Russell Rulau, Standard Catalog of United States Tokenson pp. 133-134 as HT 364, 365, 369, 370 and 371). It now appears these coppers were not Hard Times tokens at all but Blacksmiths, and were most probably made at a location that produced other Blacksmith coppers rather than at the token mint owned by the True family in Troy, New York. Interestingly, the Charlton Catalogue includes BL 38 (Wood 30) in this group. This coin is an unusual piece with an eagle on each side. Although the eagles are similar to eagles found on Wood 26 and 28, that is, BL 43 and BL 45, Oppenheim has observed the two eagles on Wood 30 slightly differ from each other and they both differ in details from the eagle on the other two tokens. Wood did not include this item in the tokens associated with the dies by Benjamin True.

ambro51

.....ahhhh there the mystery deepens. Some suspect a blacksmith who had a shop behind the Riseing Sun Tavern near Toronto, since the tokens bearing that name link with these. There are basically no answers for many questions Survivor estimates are the work of Warren Baker who "owned" this series for decades. His collection was unsurpassed and included one example of this light planchet Wood 29. Dr. Oppenheims collection also included a specimen.

Broadstruck

I was wondering who was bidding this one up into the stratosphere as none of the usual suspects even bid.

It's no wrong planchet weight mint error as once upon a time before it was worn smooth it was just misaligned with a finned rim.

ambro51

It was not worn smooth, what you see is the result of a planchet weighing less than a copper cent but 27 mm in diameter and then "hand struck" without a collar. The resulting hammer strike produced areas of full contact where the lettering is well struck and areas where the dies didn't even touch. In searching the archives I have I was able to locate only two specimens on the lightweight planchet. An excessively rare piece which is very "under the radar" and a good example of finding "gold" on eBay by searching "wrong" descriptions! I can't wait to crack it out.... PS Broadstruck, rather than "stratosphere" I got this for more like "half price"

joeykoins

Interesting specimen! Nice and a rare distinct find,also,I might add,Cool!I'd buy for that price (150$ or so)

ambro51

The two auction appearances 1987 Warren Baker collection (finest all time set) . This is the Oppenheim coin , which is holed , mid 90s auction. Here's how this branch of the series relates with die linkages.

joeykoins

ambro51,your so,so resourceful! Just curious.Did you check across the street,how and if anybody else,had these slabbed? I wonder if this is the lonely one?