I bought Grandpa’s coin jar from a guy last year. It really was his Grandpa’s coin jar. I witnessed a dealer offer him $100 for the jar & later that day, the guy sold it to me for $100. I got $100 of world silver bullion out of it and a lot of interesting copper pieces. Included was this 1798 cent (worn to AG1) with a counterstamp “KIMB” on the obverse & “O.D.” on the reverse. I don't know if it’s listed in Ruloh's book. Can anyone offer some information about this piece? Very best regards, Collect89
I can tell you where NOT to look for information. I checked my Rulau book (first 100 pages) for information on counterstamps on early American copper, and found nothing. I also searched the index, with no hits on OD or KIMBA. There were a few entries for "KIMBALL", but none of the descriptions really matched this coin. Sorry. I tried.
I have Brunk's book on counterstamps. To be listed in the book, at least two examples of a particular counterstamp need to be known. "KIMB" is not listed, but it looks to me like there may be another letter in front of the "K". The letter "C." or "G." perhaps? Take a look and see if you can determine anything. The counterstamp "O.D" is listed as D-25, and is listed as being stamped on U.S. large cents of the years 1825 & 1830. I would like to add that the "KIMB" counterstamp is of the more desirable style, meaning that a custom punch was made to generate the mark as opposed to individual letter stamps. That means that it was more likely to have been a merchant rather than someone just stamping their initials into a coin. This also means that there are also other examples of that stamp likely to be in existance, although they may be difficult to locate.
