1776 $1 Continental Dollar, CURENCY, Brass MS63 NGC. CAC. To be Offered by Heritage on July 31, 2009

Examples of Continental Dollars are known in brass, pewter, and silver. The pewter pieces are common, those in brass are rare, and examples in silver are extremely rare.

About 15 brass Continental Currency pieces are known in all grades, and they are only known from the original engraving or the first modification of Reverse A. Breen recorded an example of the EG FECIT variety in brass; however, that piece has never materialized. Current rarity information indicates that there are three known examples of Hodder 1-A.1, and about 12 known of Hodder 1-A.2, the variety being offered by Heritage at the Summer ANA Money Show.

Walter Breen recorded this piece as his Encyclopedia number 1087, and described it as a brass “prototype penny.” While it may have seemed logical to Breen that the brass pieces were trial pieces, additional study has shown that assumption to be incorrect. Hodder studied the die states of both brass and pewter examples, and determined that they were struck simultaneously.
This specimen is the only one of those known that has been described as Mint State or Uncirculated in auction offerings over the last 40 years.

In 1967 the Stack’s cataloger wrote: “This specimen is Uncirculated with but one small corrosion spot on the left stand of the ‘R’ in ‘ARE’. If not the finest specimen extant, then surely equal to it.” Unmentioned in any of its past offerings, the reverse is prominently doubled.

Census of Brass Continental Dollars
Hodder 1-A.1
1. AU Spink & Son (London, 11/1910); Virgil M. Brand; Brand Estate (Bowers and Merena, 6/1984), lot 955. Illustrated in Scott’s Encyclopedia.
2. VF20 Virgil M. Brand Collection; B. Max Mehl (privately, 1/11/1937); Norweb Collection (Bowers and Merena, 3/1988), lot 2450. Illustrated in Michael Hodder’s 1989 Anthology article.
3. Eric Newman Collection; Eric Newman Numismatic Education Foundation. Condition and past provenance unavailable.

Hodder 1-A.2
A Census of this variety is presented in order of condition, as best we are able to determine. The issue is somewhat complicated due to seemingly contradictory remarks by the cataloger of the Ford specimen. He wrote that the Ford specimen “is nicer than Roper’s, Laird Park’s and Robison’s, not quite as sharp as Taylor’s or Carter’s. The nicest two brass Continental Dollars the cataloguer has seen are the Brand II and Herdmann [sic] pieces.” That cataloger’s commentary indicates that the Ford specimen is finer than the Laird Park coin but not as nice as the Herdman coin. He apparently failed to recognize the two auction listings as the same coin. We list 12 different examples in our Census, and one or two others may exist.

1. MS63 NGC Charles Jay Collection (Stack’s, 10/1967), lot 39; Laird Park (Stack’s, 5/1976), lot 109; Herdman Collection (Bowers and Ruddy, 12/1977), lot 5039. The present specimen.
2. AU55 Taylor Collection (Bowers and Merena, 3/1987), lot 2047; Bowers and Merena (5/1992), lot 1010; Stack’s (1/2007), lot 6439.
3. AU or finer (described as “Virtually Uncirculated” in the Carter catalog) B. Max Mehl (5/1950), lot 769; Amon Carter Collection (Stack’s, 1/1984), lot 204.
4. Choice XF Virgil Brand; F.C.C. Boyd; John J. Ford, Jr. (Stack’s, 10/2003), lot 1.
5. Choice XF Pine Tree “Promised Lands” Sale, lot 335; Gilbert Steinberg (Stack’s, 10/1989), lot 63.
6. XF45 PCGS 1999 ANA Sale (Heritage, 8/1999), lot 6465.
7. XF45 New Netherlands Coin Company (privately, 8/21/1955); Norweb Collection (Bowers and Merena, 3/1988), lot 2452
8. XF Lermann Collection; Garrett Collection (Bowers and Ruddy, 10/1980), lot 1489
9. XF John L. Roper, 2nd (Stack’s, 12/1983), lot 198; Stack’s (9/2006), lot 112
10. VF30 B. Max Mehl (privately, 1/11/1937); Norweb Collection (Bowers and Merena, 3/1988), lot 2451
11. Fine Robison Collection (Stack’s, 2/1982), lot 87.
12. Eric Newman Collection; Eric Newman Numismatic Education Foundation. Condition and past provenance unavailable.

In The Early Coins of America, Sylvester Crosby wrote that William Sumner Appleton owned a brass example of this variety. No appearance of that piece is found in any sale of items from the Massachusetts Historical Society, so the Appleton specimen may represent a 13th known example if it remains in the MHS Collection.

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