“E” and “L” Countermarked Bust Quarters
Wahoo554
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Please post photos if you own one. I think these are such a fascinating numismatic mystery. Anybody have any novel theories as to the origin of these coins?
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I'm sure most numismatist know MUCH more about these than I do, but one possible theory I heard was that they may have been awards in school for excelling in English or Latin.
There is a lot of mystery surrounding these, and there are many different theories that have been proposed over the years. They supposedly came onto the scene in the early 1880s in the eastern Ohio/western Pennsylvania area. Apparently these appeared all of a sudden since contemporary auctions suggest that a whole glut of high grade counterstamped (E and L) quarters came out of the woodwork all at once (suggesting that a hoard may have been dispersed).
The JRCS Journal (which can be found on the Newman Numismatic Portal at nnp.wustl.edu) has published various articles about this topic over the years, and both “new” bust quarter books cover the counterstamps in depth. I recommend checking out the JRCS Journals and these books as they provide a wealth of information about the counterstamps.
There are many theories that have been proposed, and while many of them have somewhat reasonable aspects, none of them are completely watertight. The English and Latin school award theory is allegedly something that Walter Breen mentioned off hand without any evidence, so I am dubious about that theory. Another novel theory I read in the JRCS Journal was that mint workers may have stamped the first initial of their hometowns (i.e.- suburbs of Philadelphia) on the coins to see if they ever made it back home, but that theory wouldn’t account for the fact that they all appeared in eastern Ohio/western Pennsylvania. One of the better theories that I’ve read is that the coins were used as voting tokens by the Harmony Society (of Economite Hoard fame), which would account for the area that these coins first turned up. According to the proposed theory, the E and L stood for different factions in the Society and the different dates were assigned to older and younger members. The theory nicely explains a lot of things, but then again, if you were holding a vote, why would you go to the trouble of counterstamping coins when slips of paper would do for ballots?
Another possibility is that someone just stumbled across a stash of old bust quarters and decided to counterstamp them because they were bored. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, after all. There’s a good chance that we’ll never know the answer, but oftentimes the simplest answer is the correct one, so perhaps mere boredom really is the reason these exist. (I hope it’s not that simple, because that would be a letdown!)
2015 / 2017 thread:
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/952006/bust-quarter-1815-quot-l-quot-b-1-ngc-ms65
Another 2015 thread:
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/944722/finding-my-1836-cbh-in-an-old-apostrophe-catalog
2017 thread:
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/986170/hunkering-down-in-texas-with-my-last-ana-pick-up
@NSP
Great info. Thanks.
It is unlikely that the real meaning will ever be known.
Since the quarters would still be worth 25c, and few people would have considered them of interest until later in the 20th century, did they just circulate at will, more or less unnoticed until people like Breen started opining on them? Why are there no other examples of a significant group of the same denomination counterstamped coins circulating, not getting taken out of circulation? I have had two of the L counterstamped quarters, one grading service actually straight grades them the other main one does not. Other theories could be developed with an exhaustive study of words starting with E and L and what they may have in common to have been used in tandem.
Ted Mcauley's article in the July 2004 John Reich Journal presents the most plausible, compelling explanation, IMO. It is lengthy but very well written and worthy of your time. Turn to page 4...
The Enigmatic "E" and "L" Countermarked Quarters of 1815 & 1825. A New Hypothesis Regarding Their Origin, Purpose and Historical Context
Below are the first six pages, to get you started. Right-click "open image in new tab" for larger views.
Lance.
This is the theory I've always heard.
But, if we are going to engage in speculation, how about some kind of voting mechanism for a secret society. Someone would be given one of each and put the desired "vote" into the ballot box.
A quarter at the time had about the same purchasing power as a $20 bill today. Who would use $20s for voting?
Would be interesting to looked at the grading distribution of the counterstamped pieces as compared to the 1818 and 1825 non-counterstamped coins.
If you check the NGC Census, the vast majority of their grading events were for coins that graded AU50 or above. This is significantly higher grade than the rest of the series as a whole. I conducted an analysis of the 1815-1828 quarters on eBay and Collectors.com back in January and was able to assemble a grade distribution for the series. I personally think there are more lower graded coins than this grade distribution suggests, but either way, the E and L counterstamped coins are in far better condition than their non-counterstamped peers.
Edit: I attribute the spike for AU coins on Collectors.com to the fact that many dealers list high value coins on the site for long periods of time, causing them to appear to be more common than they actually are.
While I do not have a E or a L
Great articles.
The Economite vs. Leonite voting described in Part II of the JRCS journal article
suggests they were tokens from the society's cache of silver (from property sales in 1815 and 1825),
picked up by voters and then deposited as votes,
so the $20 was not actually spent to vote.
Like some organizations use black and white marbles....
You get one of each, deposit your "vote" into a ballot box and the other into a collection box. Both marbles stay with the organization.
I have read the various theories on these counter-stamped coins over the years here....I am surprised that all are still theories. One would think that somewhere, someone, would have written of these coins and their purpose/meaning....Cheers, RickO
They did. It's at Oak Island.
That is an exceptionally researched scholarly article, Lance. I would have thought that it would have been a PhD thesis; it should have been printed in a major publication like "The Atlantic" or "Vanity Fair", as it is that interesting.
The author says there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages of contemporary records on the Rapp sect, the Economites, in PA that would probably reveal facts on the coins that have apparently yet to be researched by a historian on this issue. We have had many Christian communist groups like this, there are some around still, so the background on the "Economites" shows a much tougher and profitable group.
https://www.ngccoin.com/boards/topic/389441-theories-on-the-1815-and-1825-e-and-l-on-quarters/
Start the dig! ... and the never ending TV show.
Speaking of the Economites, I had never heard of their $75k silver hoard. This brief recap of the hoard is fascinating.
https://www.pcgs.com/news/a-history-of-major-us-hoards
You are missing a good bit of information on the research into these interesting counterstamps.
Go to the JRCS website (JRCS.org) dropdown menu at top left select jr journal index search counterstamps and you will find 12 articles or letters concerning the E/L quarters.
Have fun reading about the ongoing thoughts about them.
A: The year they spend more on their library than their coin collection.
A numismatist is judged more on the content of their library than the content of their cabinet.
So is anyone up to buying a couple $1000 groups of one specific mint mark date quarter, with a 2020 date, and carefully counter stamping all of them either D on the left side of George or R on the right side of george, or something like that, and then launching them at 4 different cities in the US and wait to see when it picks up in the news or PCGS or this board?
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Thanks for posting this. The grading distribution suggests these pieces were preserved by recipients as somehow "special." The Economite archives appear to be the most promising resource at this point.