This week a Newman Portal user searched for “Rothsay Cotton.” I thought this might be a 19th century American cotton producer in the south, which turned out to a bad guess, especially since trade tokens were more common in the north. Rothsay Cotton is in fact a UK countermark, and the first relat...
Read more...In June 2016 we reported on the 1864 Catalogue of Coins of Mrs. Marshall from the Dave Hirt library. The function of the document wasn’t entirely clear – did it represent an actual auction, an exhibit catalog, or a fixed price list? A recent discovery at the ANS answers the question. The back co...
Read more...“Numismatics With Kenny” is a video series created by YN (young numismatist) Kenny Sammut of the Wilmington Coin Club. This series is now in its fourth year and numbers well over a hundred videos, including video from ANA Summer Seminars and Wilmington Coin Club meetings. Sammut’s videos capture,...
Read more...This week an NNP user searched for “Fisler.” The writer speculated this referred to an American token, and for once made a correct guess. The token has only a few auction appearances, the most recent being Stack’s sale of the Alan Bleviss collection of Civil War tokens (part IV) in March, 2010, w...
Read more...A Henry H. Leeds sale of 1863 contains a lot described as "A board containing 56 copper cents, different dates, no 1793, -94, -99, or 1804." It appears we have a collector in 1863 attempting to fill a coin board, and encountering a number of missing issues.Sale catalog at: https://nnp.wustl.edu/l...
Read more...This week a Newman Portal user searched for “United South Token.” This is a contemporary Confederate silver token, sometimes referred to as a Confederate half dime. The piece depicts a Confederate flag on the obverse, and southern agricultural products on the reverse. The token is mentioned in th...
Read more...This week a Newman Portal user searched for “school girl,” referring to George Morgan’s pattern dollar of 1879. The earliest use of this term appears to be in the New York Coin & Stamp sale of the Doughty collection (1891), in which an example sold for the extraordinary price of $71.00. This ...
Read more...It’s been said that there’s “no Santa Claus in numismatics.” This is true, of course. Except when it’s not.The quote appears to have originated with Lee F. Hewitt [https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/PersonDetail/971], the founder and publisher of Numismatic Scrapbook magazine [https://nnp.wustl.edu/li...
Read more...Christmas pudding is a traditional English desert somewhat akin to American fruitcake. An old tradition suggests hiding a silver threepence in the concoction, with the promise of good fortune for the finder. No doubt more than a few coins have been accidentally ingested. Some related discussion ...
Read more...A Newman Portal user this week searched for “Isaac Excell.” Excell was a Chicago collector who consigned to two Ben Green sales (1903, 1905) and one sale of B. Max Mehl (1927). Both of the Green sales include runs of hard times tokens consigned by Excell and cataloged by Low numbers. The August 2...
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