Civil War Sesquicentennial relic token idea
Zoins
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Given that the sesquicentennial of the ending of the Civil War is this year, I was wondering what people thought of melting down a Civil War relic to create a relic medal Civil War token? If this was done by Dan, it could even be a real token with a monetary value at the Moonlight Mint!
For example, what about creating a token from the metal armor plates of the Merrimac, say available in the commonly available horseshoe:
For example, what about creating a token from the metal armor plates of the Merrimac, say available in the commonly available horseshoe:
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SS Central America. Some dealers tried to sell them, but many of them contained large amounts of gold and therefore had very high prices. Sales were slow, so somebody got the idea of melting them down and making them into replicas of the old time $50 gold pieces. I see these pieces at the shows in certification holders, but I don't think that they are good sellers.
The case you cite here is something else. In the early 1900s iron from the CSS Virginia (a.k.a. Merrimac) was recovered from the place where the Confederates blew up the ship in 1862. The Confederate idea was to keep the North from capturing the ship. The recovered metal was a relic, but it was not very appealing. It was just a lot of twisted, rusted iron. It was turned into items like this miniture horseshoe and more importantly some tokens, which were once thought to be from the Civil War era. Even though we now know that the tokens were made circa 1906, they still sell for as much as $3,500 in the top conditions.
These items are an exception, and they now bring this kind of money a century after they were made.
The short answer is, I don't think that this is a good idea financially.
BTW I do have an example of this miniture horseshoe on a better preserved card, and the "poorest known" example of the CSS Virginia token. I would like to have a better example of the token, but have not run into a suitable replacement.
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that's on sale for something like $500,000.
Much smaller chips and fragments sell individually for $20 to $40 or so.
<< <i>The horseshoes alone can go for 100/500 and you want to destroy a real piece of history to make modern JUNK? >>
I misinterpreted his message at first also. He is not proposing to melt the horseshoe. He is providing it as an example of a piece that was made from relic materials.
Check it out -----> Raising of the CSS Georgia
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