Rebuilding My Colonial Coin Collection / Box Of 20
MidLifeCrisis
Posts: 10,613 ✭✭✭✭✭
Last September, I decided to rebuild my colonial coin collection. At the time I only had the two Fugios you'll see below. Colonial era coins have been my main collecting passion for many years. I go off on other tangents but I always come back to them. Below is what I have so far. Not many yet, but I hope you like them.
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Comments
maybe not many, but what you have sure are nice! Impressive.
There was a nice copper Myddelton in a recent Heritage sale that sold for a reasonable price.
I was very tempted, but I was waiting for later auction lots.
https://coins.ha.com/itm/colonials/1796-myddelton-token-copper-w-8900-r7-pr64-brown-pcgs/a/1390-3442.s
Did you try for it?
The provenances alone are very impressive!
And this thread reminds me that I still want a London elephant token…..
You need a nice Vermont Landscape
Wow ... Nice start to jumping back into colonials
Is there a some target you are setting to collect? there are so many varieties of colonials one may fine a hard path. When I collected colonials ( Sold them off a few years back) I used the PCGS and NGC Registries "TYPE" set a collecting guide.
Just curious as to what your approach will be.
OMG ... My Mother was Right about Everything!
I wake up with a Good Attitude Every Day. Then … Idiots Happen!
Thanks for your comments. Generally, I use the PCGS EARLY AMERICAN COINS AND TOKENS BASIC DESIGN SET (1616-1820) as the framework of my collection. I will color outside those lines sometimes though, as with the Garrett 1720-B French Colonies ⅓Ecu. I will also add a Pillar Dollar to the collection at some point.
No, I didn't go for that one. It's very nice though. I've owned a couple of Myddeltons over the years and I love them. I'll add another one (or two) to my collection some day.
Fantastic assortment. I love that Sou Marque
Howdy MLC. It's good to see you again and whenever you drop by. So you are now collecting cool coins that are scarce and and in high grade with great histories? So, what's new?
I love the collection you are rebuilding!
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Great to see you back!
Latin American Collection
Love the looks of the elephant token and all the rest as well 🤎
Super start for a box of 20.
It's hard to believe someone thought that design was appropriate for those early hardy Kentucky backwoodsmen.
Love to see a fellow Colonial Box-of-20'er! Yours are sure finer than mine, wonder what your list looks like - here's mine -
1 Neth. Leeuwendaalder 1589 VFD
2 Pine Tree Shilling 1652 20
3 St Patrick Farthing 1670 30
4 American Plantations 1688 55
5 Elephant Token - London 1694 45
6 French Colonies - 9 Denier 1721 20
7 Woods - Rosa Americana 1723 45
8 Woods - Hibernia 1723 35
9 Spain/Mexico 8 Reales 1749 40
10 Voce Populi 1760 40
11 Pitt Halfpenny 1766 40
12 Virginia Halfpenny 1773 40
13 Machin's Mills 1776 20
14 RI Ship Token 1778 40
15 Chalmers Shilling 1783 VFD
16 Vermont (landscape) 1786 VFD
17 Massachusetts 1787 25
18 New Jersey 1787 30
19 Connecticut 1787 45
20 Nova Eborac 1787 30
Wish list:
Sommer Island 1616
Lord Baltimore 1659
Higley 1737
Stuff like Fugio, Nova C, Washington tokens, I put in another box, as there aren't really "colonial" anymore.
No colonial set would be complete without a great Pillar Dollar and Pistareen
Latin American Collection
I'm just beginning to collect colonials and have a lot to learn. One of the coins I have already aquired is a 1787 (my favorite year) Connecticut 1/2P. I specifically purchased the coins because of its "flaws" that I thought represented "typical" minting in the colonies at that time. It is off center, there is a clip, parts of the planchet delaminated causing black marks and the top-right of the obverse looks to have environmental damage but evidently it is just damage with the source copper. It graded a straight VF35 and I love it. Next to my Fugio it is my second favorite colonial.
Beside being a great looking coin ... I love the photo presentation. Nice eye catching photo
OMG ... My Mother was Right about Everything!
I wake up with a Good Attitude Every Day. Then … Idiots Happen!
So glad you’ve resumed your original passion. Does this mean you’ve abandoned your US key date effort or is this a companion journey you’ve undertaken?
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
I’m often tempted to collect colonials but I don’t need another collecting diversion!
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
I sold the key date collection to buy several of the colonials in my new collection. The key dates were fun for a while, but I found I was not nearly as interested in them as I am colonials. I was even forgetting which key dates I had. They just weren't scratching the itch for me. Colonials scratch the itch!
Colonials aren't a diversion, they're an obsession! From more mainstream colonials I've gotten into the 1640 countermarked French coins or "Black Dogges" that circulated heavily in Canada and filtered down into the English colonies. Wow, talk about a rabbit hole!
@MidLifeCrisis that is a really impressive group!!!
My interest in Vermont coppers ultimately led me to buy a second home in the Rupert area, now THAT’S a rabbit hole! 😬
I do love colonials, the only caveat I’d add is it seems to me that they’re not quite as liquid come sell time as other more popular federal issues… that may or may not be important to the collector.
The state coinages, proposed state and national coinages, Machin's Mills counterfeits, and arguably Chalmers pieces are not colonials since the colonial period effectively ended when we defeated the British at Yorktown. One could argue that anything struck after ratification of the Articles of Confederation in March, 1781 is no longer colonial, however, our victory was not yet assured, so I like Yorktown as the end. Passage of the 1783 Treaty of Paris when the Brits recognized our independence can also be argued.
Regardless, all of the so-called colonials I mentioned were struck 1783 or later making them Confederation Coinages or, with the exception of Chalmers, "Post-Colonial" as the Red Book categorizes them. I think the Chalmers misclassification is an oversight.
I also do not consider Kentucky, Franklin Press, Castorland, Myddelton, etc. tokens and medals, along with the 1776 Continental Currency medal, to be colonial or post-colonial coinage as there is no evidence that these tokens and medals were intended to circulate in the US. I'm sure some number of the Conder tokens made it over here and were used as half pence, but that's also true of counterfeit and genuine British half pence.
My cutoff for which box-of-20 a coin goes into is whether it recognizes the USA as its authority, either by the actual words US/USA (Nova C, Bar copper), or by a slogan like E Pluribus Unum or even the more cryptic Auctori Plebis. Thus, the first 8 coins in my 'early US' box of 20 are -
Continental $1 1776
Nova Constellatio 1783
Bar Copper 1785
Immunis Columbia 1787
Auctori Plebis 1787
Fugio Cent 1787
Washington type 1791
Kentucky Token 1792
After that comes my chain cent and all the rest.
Exquisite. Some coins I don’t often see.
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@ambro51 “How do you classify Vermonts? During the entire 1785-1788 period Vermont was an Independent Republic. ”
You’re not telling me I’ve got a collection of foreign coins, are you!?!?!
lol seriously, I wouldn’t get hung up on the terms, I just consider all of it pre-federal coinage of early America, and they’re all fascinating.
Couple of my favorite VTs, totally out of any semblance of order.
Can you cite actual federal legislation? (Wikipedia and other internet "sources" are not legislation).
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Wikipedia is not even a source of real information, if I start citing Wikipedia, someone call me a mental health professional, please!
Vermont was not admitted as a state until 1791 while the constitution took effect in 1789.
I believe that Article 1 of the constitution said that no state may coin money, but it did not retrospectively make the coinage issued previously illegal to circulate, especially not for a republic not yet a part of the states and therefore not under Federal jurisdiction. The issue just became obsolete as time went on.
Latin American Collection
Maybe you should "look it up." The state coinages ceased due to the ratification of the new constitution which removed the right of states to coin and reserved it to the federal gov't. This DID NOT make previously struck coins illegal in commerce. They continued to circulate once the Coppers Panic passed.
"Common knowledge" is neither all that common nor knowledge, it's usually equal amounts of BS, wishful thinking, and fantasy.
Goodbye
Why the attitude and attacks @Rittenhouse ? Just unnecessary.
Latin American Collection
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Back on topic:
@MidLifeCrisis glad to see you back collecting colonial coinage. Too many forum members have left us over the last few years that had such interesting stories to go with their collections. Kind of takes the wind out if my sails, to be honest. We can only talk about precious metals prices, modern designs, and CAC stickers so much before I begin to lose interest, too. Can't wait to see how your set comes along.
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
It's interesting to me that the PCGS Registry "complete sets" under the heading of Colonial Coins all have the date range 1616-1820. As PCGS points out: "The money used in the American colonies included a diverse assortment of coins and tokens. Some were made on American soil (with or without legal authority), others were made in foreign lands expressly for circulation in the Colonies, and others were never meant to circulate here, but did."
It's also interesting to me that the Coinage Act of 1857 ended the status of foreign coins as legal tender, repealing all acts "authorizing the currency of foreign gold or silver coins".
For my own collection, I don't get too particular about the coins I include. I generally look for "pre-federal" coins struck before Congress established the U.S. Mint in 1792. I generally refer to all of these coins as colonial coins. But I would happily include, for example, a Myddelton Token since I was born in a small town on the Ohio River in Kentucky (by the way, I am the Mark Collier who provided the information in this CoinFacts article.) I would also include a Kentucky Token for the same reason even though it has an even more nebulous connection to early America.
I encourage everyone to collect "colonial coins". I also encourage everyone to define your colonial coin collection as you wish. Collect what you like; like what you collect; and don't worry about it too much!