This is a tiny little guy, about 1/2" across. Says barclays, Lead City, black hills, on back side, features indian head type bust o n front, with the date of 1883. I have searched all search engines and cannot come up with anything. Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Thanks.
My bet is that it was issued by a business by the name of Barclay that was located in what is now the City of Lead SD (Lead City). It is located in the Black Hills. Unfortunately there is no Barclays listed in the Chamber of Commerce so they are either not a member or more likely the business no longer exists. You might try contacting the Chamber of Commerce to see if they have any knowledge of it or if they can put you in contact with a local historical socirty that might have more information.
Great information, I love this site,wish I had more reasons to use it.I will post what ever I find out about this little guy. Thanks
You could pick some area of numismatics that fascinates you and start collecting as a hobby, than you will have lots of uses for this site... :thumb:
You are absolutely correct. I have collected coins since I was 12, and need to settle down and concentrate on 1 or 2 things.
Lead is 40 miles from my home and it is a really cool and special place. At one time Lead was the largest city in South Dakota. In 1876 gold was discovered and soon after Hearst from the Comstock brought his wealth and knowledge and consolidated all the claims in the deadwood area and created the Homestake gold mine. Homestake ran from 1876 until 2002 or so and mined over 400 million oz of gold, making it the largest gold mine in North America. An ore tax was created during the depression and the mine single handedly kept the state afloat during that time. Today they use a lab at the 5000 ft level to study nutrinos. You can google map the open pit from satellite. Anyway, imagine hundreds of businesses operating in the last hundred and forty years that no longer exist. Killer mining history and worth studying. If it is gold, that's great if not it is the lettering Black Hills and Lead that make it good not the business, IMO. Value? anyones guess, but I'm thinking people from here would pay 50 to 80 bucks for it at local auction.
By golly, you seem quite informed about that area. Love that. I may put it on Ebay and see what kind of response I recieve. Thank you for taking the time to post that fascinating bit of knowledge. Everyone that has answered my post are great, look forward to receiving posts. Must plan, in my travels, to visit Lead.
I wouldn't settle. I primarily collect foreign coins, but I still have U.S. coins and notes and medals and tokens etc etc, even a couple of stamps I would rather have a wide collecting scope, over a narrow scope. People that only collect a couple of things will pay more than something is worth so that they can bring something home from someplace and add it to their collection. If your range is wide, you can always find a deal on a few things and bring them home, than decide what you wish to keep and what you wish to sell to further fuel your hobby. Last year I made a $4 profit for the year on my hobby. I bought and sold hundreds of dollars in coins and added many coins to my collection, but my goal was not to spend any out of pocket money on coins for the year and it worked.
