Many U.S. numismatic items have been counterfeited or otherwise imitated over the years, some so often that authenticators such as myself are automatically suspicious of them. Near the head of this list are the Indian Peace Medals issued by the United States government from the 1790s up to 1890, of which perhaps 90% of the allegedly rare pieces are fakes.

In the other fields of numismatics, some of the lesser fakes that we see are so easy to identify that we can do it over the phone with one hand tied behind our backs. For instance, many early U.S. and Confederate banknotes have been widely reproduced in what is commonly called replica form. These replicas are similar to the genuine items, but significantly different in some important way so that the maker cannot be accused of counterfeiting with intent to deceive, an important legal point.

On the replica banknotes, the key difference is usually in the heavy, parchment-like paper used, which one replicator “antiqued” by dipping the notes in pots of tea and drying them on a clothesline in the sun, giving them a look and feel much different than the flimsy rag paper typical of the originals. When I was with the Collectors Clearinghouse department at Coin World, or later with the American Numismatic Association Certification Service in Colorado Springs, we kept a list of the commonly seen replicas in our desks, so that when people called about one of the bills we could ask them the date and denomination of it and be able to tell them the serial number of their bill from the list.

Many colonial and territorial coins were also issued in replica form before the passage of the Hobby Protection Act of 1973, and many of these had distinguishing marks such as misspelled words or incorrect designs or a cryptic “R” (for REPLICA) that made them easy to spot over the telephone. Unfortunately, when people called us about Indian peace medals, there was almost nothing we could do without seeing the pieces, as most of the fakes were originally made by the United States Mint!

An excellent article on the entire Peace Medal series written by Robert W. Julian appeared in the November, 1994 issue of COINage (q.v.). For additional information on the struck pieces in this series, the reader is referred to the Peace Medal section of Julian’s definitive “Medals of the United States Mint–The First Century, 1792-1892,” published by the Token And Medal Society and available to members of the ANA through its library at 818 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903.

To briefly summarize the history of Indian Peace Medals, the British, French and Spanish Empires had each produced elaborate pieces of various sizes to present to Chiefs of varying importance whose tribes were friendly to their respective causes. Upon achieving independence with the help of certain tribes, and faced with the hostile opposition of other tribes who had been paid or persuaded to oppose the independence movement, the young American government quickly decided to continue the practice of gifting medals to native American chieftains it considered to be its friends.
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By Thomas K. DeLorey – Courtesy of Harlan J Berk

For a small State, Connecticut has played a large role in the field of colonial American numismatics. Besides being known for its wealth of pre- and post- Revolutionary paper issues, its most famous coins are the Higley Coppers of 1737-39 and the Connecticut Coppers of 1785-89.

Photos used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries

The Higley coppers were issued by Dr. Samuel Higley and his heirs, using virtually pure copper from a mine they owned near Granby, CT. Higley’s first token issue bore the picture of a deer with the inscription THE. VALVE. OF. THREE. PENCE. on one side, with three crowned hammers, the date 1737 and the inscription CONNECTICVT on the other. It is arguable as to which side should be considered the obverse, but common usage calls the side with the deer the obverse.

The next issue used the same obverse plus a similar reverse with I AM GOOD COPPER replacing CONNECTICVT. Perhaps someone objected to the use of the name of the state on an unauthorized private token. Someone certainly objected to the value Higley placed on the piece, which was no heavier than an English half pence of the period and sometimes lighter, and his third issue saw the deer side changed to VALVE. ME. AS. YOU. PLEASE. A second die saw VALVE spelled as VALUE. Both include the Roman numeral III beneath the deer, thereby hinting at the value that Higley hoped they would pass at.

Higley died in 1737 while escorting a load of his copper to England, and the mine was taken over by his brother, John. John was presumably responsible for a fourth issue that paired the Deer/III obverse with an undated reverse that bore a hatchet with the inscription J. CUT. MY. WAY. THROUGH., and a similar issue that bore the date 1739 below the hatchet. A sixth issue paired the undated hatchet die with an obverse that bore a 12-spoked wheel and the inscription THE. WHEELE. GOES. ROUND., but it is not known if this issue predates or postdates the 1739 issue.

All of the Higley pieces are very rare today, according to legend because they were popular among goldsmiths as a source for pure copper suitable for alloying gold. For an interesting but probably apocryphal legend regarding the supposed reason why Higley valued his tokens at three pence, see “The Early Coins of America” by Sylvester S. Crosby (1875 and reprints). (more…)

What is an Eagle? According to my 1975 Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, it is a diurnal bird of prey noted for its strength, size, gracefulness, keenness of vision and powers of flight; the silver insignia of rank for an Army colonel or a Navy captain; or a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. In golf, it is the completion of a hole in two strokes less than par. In gold, it is a coin!

Specifically, my Webster’s says it is a ten-dollar gold coin of the U.S. bearing an eagle on the reverse. My 1969 American Heritage Dictionary goes so far as to call it a “former” gold coin of the United States having a face value of ten dollars, without specifying if it was “formerly gold” since transmuted into base metal, “formerly a coin” but now demonetized, or something that has ceased in an Orwellian way to have ever existed at all.

However, either antiquated edition might as well have been set in type by Gutenberg, as they both predate the current American Eagle one ounce gold coin first struck in 1986 with a face value of $50. This new coin left us with two different legal tender “Eagles” of different weights, sizes, finenesses (usually) and denominations, and hardly a day goes by at Berk’s that we do not have to explain the difference to a would-be customer.

How did the first Eagle come to be? The path is long and twisted. It began with the Articles of Confederation, approved by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, but not ratified by the states until March 1, 1781, which reserved for the newly-named “United States in Congress Assembled” the sole right to regulate the values, compositions and alloys of coins struck by itself or by the various states.

A central authority was certainly needed, as the paper money of the 13 states and the Republic of Vermont, which was generally based upon a promise to pay the bearer Spanish Milled Dollars or fractions thereof, valued the “Dollar” at anywhere from 4-1/2 to 8 state shillings per 8 Reales coin, and the money of one state was not easily convertible into the money of its neighbor.

On January 15, 1782, Robert Morris, then Superintendent of Finance, presented to Congress a plan to establish a Mint and a monetary system based upon the Spanish Dollar, that would be compatible with most of the paper money in circulation and could circulate alongside it.

Morris’ plan, prepared in large part by his unrelated namesake and assistant Gouverneur Morris in anticipation of a Congressional request for same, divided the Dollar into 1,440 parts or units, this figure being the approximate number of one-quarter grains of pure silver in an 8 Reales, and a number more or less evenly divisible by the units of account used by the different states (except for South Carolina, where inflation had pushed the Dollar to 32-1/2 shillings). (more…)