Picked up another cool engraved piece: a pictorial love token on an 1868 quarter-eagle

So it looks like I'll be doing another side collection of love tokens again. I keep building these, then selling them off to feed my primary "Eclectic Box" collection... but then I find myself drawn again to the quirky folk art or interesting provenance on some love token. I still browse that eBay category pretty regularly. I guess they've kind of gotten in my blood- and stayed there.

I saw this one for sale a couple of years ago but didn't have the money. Lo and behold, it reappeared on eBay again recently, and I bid around spot price, and won. I'm happy, because pictorial love tokens on gold host coins are rare.

The artistry on this one is not sublime, but it has a folksy charm to it. Given the "hatching chick" motif, it was almost certainly a christening token, and I would wager that "E. F. D.", whoever he or she was, was likely born in 1868. We'll never know, of course, but these pieces always present some fun little mysteries like that. And sometimes the mysteries can be solved, and the coin gives up its fascinating backstory.

That won't happen here, with just a set of initials to go on, but it's a pictorial carving on a mid-19th century gold coin, which in itself makes it worth having.

 

What drew me back into love tokens was the recent surprise gift of this piece, done on a 1798/7 16-stars dime!

This one's not about the engraving (though that's competent enough), or the backstory, but the fact that it's on a rare host coin. This is the only 18th century US silver coin I have ever owned, or am likely to own, and as of this typing, I believe the VG price of such a coin (were it undamaged) would be in the neighborhood of $1,300-1,400. My kind partner in the deal sold it to me for one dollar! So that really counts as a generous gift.

The date is attributable by the fact that it has the 16-stars Heraldic Eagle reverse, which was only used on the 1798/7 dime.

I need to take better pictures of it.

 

Back to the "hatching chick" motif again, for a moment. It is not an uncommon theme on 19th century christening tokens, though I've seen more with a "stork" motif.

Here's one on an 1883 dime I used to have. The engraving here is top-notch. Wish I still had this piece.




Here's the more typical "stork". I no longer have this piece, either.




And here is another, with more folksy and less professional engraving, but special, because it has all three of my initials, in the proper sequence! That's a pretty rare coincidence!

It features a stork in a marsh scene. My daily commute takes me through Georgia's Marshes of Glynn, and on the morning I bought that coin, a stork flew across the road in front of my car. When I later sold that collection of love tokens, I held that piece back, and gave it to my mother. She has a charm bracelet of love tokens with her children and grandchildren's names on the coins. So this one, while no longer in my personal collection, is still in the family.

 

Of course.

 

A gold "eagle" was $10.00 from 1792-1933. So quarter-eagles were $2.50 pieces, half-eagles $5.00, and double-eagles $20.00.

All were a pretty good bit of money in the mid-1800s, which is why they were seldom made into love tokens except by wealthier folks.