Newman Portal Search of the Week: Blacksmith Tokens

One of the things included on the Newman Portal (select any landing page under “Library” to view) is a running list of search terms entered into NNP.  It’s always interesting to see what our users are looking for - one of the terms appearing this week was “blacksmith tokens."  An NNP search locates the Michael K. Ringo Blacksmith Token collection cataloged in Stack’s Bowers January 2013 sale, and here we learn that these tokens circulated as counterfeit halfpence in lower Canada, and that they are classified by “Wood” numbers. The NNP also finds the Colonial Newsletter, December 2014 (no. 156), and here Robert D. Leonard offers a formal definition – “The term ‘Blacksmith tokens’ is simply a convenient label for crude imitations of older coins in circulation in Canada in the 1830, similar to the designation ‘Hard Times Tokens’ for U.S. tokens of a slightly later period…..”.  NNP further cites the Colonial Newsletter, December 2011 (no. 147), and here we find that the standard reference for these tokens was written by Howland Wood in the April 1910 Numismatist. This ten-page article details the die varieties and marriages in the series.  Now it gets interesting – a check of auction catalogs on NNP reveals that the term “blacksmith token” appears only twice in auction catalogs prior to the 1910 Wood article – proving once again that there’s nothing like a “standard” guide to spur interest in a series. After 1910 the term is found frequently in Thomas Elder auction sale catalogs, with occasional mentions in the B. Max Mehl catalog series as well.