Speaking of chop marked U.S. coin from the 1700's, has anyone ever seen or heard of a U.S. Colonial
afford
Posts: 1,723 ✭✭✭✭✭
or post U.S. colonial that was chop marked. I got to believe there would be examples out in the wild.
0
Comments
What U.S. Colonial could that be? I can't think of any big silver coins that were made in the future U.S. during the colonial period. If you are taking about a Spanish Empire coin, that would something other than U.S.
As for a Bust dollar there was one in another thread to which you responded.
China was wild on silver, not the pissy local pocket change used in the American colonies.
I would concede that the Chinese merchants might have tested a new punch on any foreign coppery dross available.
A silver continental dollar?
Highly unlikely, as others have stated. No silver=no chops, in the vast majority of cases, excluding locally circulating Chinese cash coins and a very select few, scattered examples that cannot be considered the norm. How many pre-federal issues are silver? Not many; the Willow/Pine/Oak Tree Coinage, Chalmers series, not much else. The coin would have to stay in circulation well into the nineteenth century to be shipped out in any bulk lot (as some Seated Dollars are thought to have been mixed in with Trade Dollar shipments). Otherwise, it would have to be brought in the pocket of a merchant or sailor who just happened to have one of these scarce issues and then deposited it at a vendor in the Orient. Then it would have to survive the melting pot, where most foreign issues finally gave up the ghost. All of these factors seem to add up to the probability of a genuine colonial issue being nil.
Again, I believe the odds are against any such coin existing. A coin made of a material that the Chinese assigned very little intrinsic value to, and saw no opportunity to redeem for face would be next to useless to introduce. Foreign (non-Chinese) copper coins with chops do exist, as you claim, but most examples I have seen most likely constitute token or "lucky" chops as opposed to genuine commercial chops applied to circulating silver. Additionally, any colonial or post-colonial coin would have to travel from the East Coast, where the majority maintain their maximum value, and remain in circulation for many decades before, by complete happenstance, being brought to China in the pocket of a merchant, who would then have to make a conscious decision to spend it, knowing how little he would receive in return given its metal content to the Chinese. At least the Large Cent was a nationally circulating coin, meaning that it might have been used for its intended purpose on the West Coast, where ghe majority of U.S.-Chinese trade originated, and brought along as pocket change.
I have stated in the other thread on early chopmarked pieces today that "exhibiting just one chop certainly does not mean it (a coin) is inauthentic"; my only statement was that multiple chops provide a greater sample to determine if the coin is, in fact, genuinely chopped. As such, a piece with multiple chop marks provides a more definitive means of demonstrating authenticity, which, in the case of rare type coins, makes them substantially more attractive to me personally than a coin bearing a single chop mark. This does not necessarily render coins bearing a single chop as fake, it is only a personal preference of my own. Furthermore, I never claimed that chopped early dollars do not exist, they certainly do. Please read my comments thoroughly before you attempt to misconstrue my opinion.
I believe the following images are of the lot in question.
I personally do not believe the marks on this coin to be of Chinese origin. The obverse appears to bear the imprint of some form of stamp, but certainly not a Chinese character, nor of any other identifiable symbol, though it does appear to have been applied quite a long time ago. I see no evidence that would indicate the marks were applied in any particular location. The gouges in the reverse also do appear to be intentionally applied, but again, I see no evidence indicating China as the source of such marks. It would not make sense for a Chinese merchant to apply test/assay cuts to a copper coin; what base metal would they be looking for? Again, this is simply my opinion, and I would like to keep this discussion civil.
No one can say with 100% certainty what kind of mark that is, but it's quite clear that the marks on the Fugio shown above are not Chinese merchant chopmarks.
Another reason that it is extremely unlikely that there are many, if any, chop marked colonial coins is that the colonies did not trade with China. U.S. trade with China did not really start to take off until the mid-18th century when our west coast started to become populated. In fact, given transportation challenges in the mid-1800's, in some ways it was easier for folks in San Francisco to do business with China than with New York.
Complete Set of Chopmarked Trade Dollars
Carson City Silver Dollars Complete 1870-1893http://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/showcase.aspx?sc=2722"
Also, I am told that some of the "chop marks" I have seen on early U.S. coins are more likely to be Caribbean or Latin American counterstamps. However, I would like to see more research on that.
Complete Set of Chopmarked Trade Dollars
Carson City Silver Dollars Complete 1870-1893http://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/showcase.aspx?sc=2722"
IIRC, holed Chinese bronze coins were strung together in strings of 1,000 coins to get some very modest unit of account. Chinese were wild about silver, not copper/bronze. The Chinese were not chopping individual copper/bronze coins in the normal course of trading.
In both of these recent chopmark related threads, I find many valid points in almost every argument by almost every participant except for those put forth by the OP of this thread.
I hadn't heard about that before, but then again I am not a student of chopped coins. Anyone have more info on this?
No.
I have not seen a colonial chop marked coin... At all the large shows I have attended, to my knowledge - and observations - there were none displayed or offered. Cheers, RickO