1863 Civil War Token - Uncut Partial Collar Strike!

Hey, Ryan

It's a seller's store card, not mine. I'd like to have it, but it's currently about $440 too costly for me. ; )

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

If that area of the obverse relates to the weak denticles and raised line on the reverse at 11-4:00, then perhaps the dies clashed in that area? I've seen similar features on coins struck at mints.

Very interesting token! :thumb:

 

Very sweet coin man. :thumb:

Phoenix

 

There are two types of counterfeits Contemporary Counterfeits which were intended to circulate at the time, and Collector Counterfeits were were made for sale to collectors. The Collector Counterfeits can be broken down into a further two classes, the Fantasies whch were die pairing that never really existed as circulation pieces but which were produced just so as to have something to sell to a collector, and the Hole Fillers which were made to be similar to a rare piece to act as a hole filler until a genuine could be obtained and as a means of cheating the collector by making him think he had the genuine item.

Civil War tokens are remarkable free of the Contemporary Counterfeits, and Hole fillers, but it does have a fair number of Fantasies. Conder Tokens on the other hand has almost no Hole Fillers, but the Contemporary Counterfeits and Fantasies are quite extensive. The Contemporary Counterfeits and the Fantasies were actually made during the 1790's and are cataloged and collected right along side the genuine tokens. Most counterfeits were not made in off metals but were the same pure copper as the genuines but of lighter weight. Most of the off-metal pieces in Conders would be classed in the Fantasies and most of them are actually quite rare. The most commonly encountered hole filler or modern counterfeit is a Warwickshire piece that copies the John Wilkinson/Vulcan that was produced in the 1950's. I see this one on ebay frequently being sold as a genuine token. Oddly enough sometimes with an attribution which is strange because if you look at it closely it really doesn't look right. It seems to be struck on a low zinc brass alloy but I really can't figure out how the token was struck. The reverse show wll formed rims with a nice squared border that meets the edge at a sharp square angle. The obverse rims though are poorly formed and they round over into the edge. The closest I can come would be that the pieces is struck and punched from the strip with the same stroke of the press.

Yes you would have the metal flowing out but it flows out in the FULL THICKNESS OF THE PLANCHET. It would not just be in a thin flange in the center of the edge.

I don't know the sources you read but they were wrong. Yes a geat many of the Conders were struck in single piece collars but they were either plain or vertically reeded. (surprisingly there are very few vertically reeded Conders. They were typically diagonally reeded /////// or \\\\\\\ and you can't do that with a ope piece collar.) The tokens with lettered edges were created by lettering the edges of the blanks before striking and then striking without a close collar. There are a few cases where a lettered edge planchet was struck in a plain close collar, but in those cases th lettering on the edge is crushed to near illegibility. You are correct in that it is not possible to create a lettered edge token from a single piece collar.

Matthew Boulton was experimenting with a press that used a multi-piece collar to strike a lettered edge token with a single strike of the press. It was invented by the French engraver Droesz (sp) but he was never able to get it to work properly.

There are three ways that I know of to create a lettered edge with a multi-piece collar die. The first method was to fit a three or four piece edge die into a larger restraining collar and then place the planchet in the center and stike it. The piece and the edge dies would then have to both be knocked out of the retaining collar and then the pieces put back into the retaining collar. This method obviously is not suitable for high production coinage. The second has the edge die pieces mounted to the restrining collar with a hinge. After the strike the lower die rises up forcing the collar pieces to "open up' so the coin can be removed and then powerful springs return the edg dies to position as the lower die retracts. This was the method used for the Saint-Gaudens eagle and double eagle and the current proof dollar coins. The final method has the whole collar divided into three or more pieces which completely retract away from the coin for removal. Since this requires more complex machinery it is not typically used for coins.

This piece makes no sense to me. There is no way I can see this coin being struck using a collar system. It is not the result of a broken collar or a missing collar. As I mentioned a missing collar results in a spreading out of the full thickness of the planchet not just a thin flange in the center of the edge.. The only way a collar break could do that would be if the collar split horizontally and in that case there is no way the coin would be removable from the collar without major damage to the coin. As I mentioned earlier that only time I've seen something like this is on a cast piece where the two halves of the mold are not clamped together well and the metal squeezes out between them at the seam.

 

Interesting discussion, and some nice pics. There are some fake cwts around, and I have 4 of them. The ones that I have are cast examples of an off metal that were subjected to a copper wash. A few of them have lost most of their original copper color. I believe they were made to circulate as they do show wear. But fake cwts are hard to find, no doubt.

 

Are you sure about that? I don't think that Civil War Tokens were accepted by too many banks, because they were not coin of the realm, and were not made of a precious metal. They were just emergency tokens that were put into circulation because Uncle Sam's own coins were being hoarded for their metal value. Furthermore, the issue and use of these tokens was prohibited by the Act of 1864, which was enacted in large part because merchants in New York (and probably elsewhere) had refused to redeem tokens that they, themselves, had issued.

 

Hmmm... I don't know for sure. : )

Although I could be wrong, it is my understanding that Augustus Lindenmueller refused the U.S. government's attempt to redeem a very large number of his tokens that they had gathered up from a large number of banks. From that point forward banks began to refuse the tokens, and the Coinage Act of 1984 came to pass.

I am not sure of what happened after that either. Did circulation stop immediately? That's a good question and I have no idea about that. : )

I'm eager to know though. : )

So die sinkers may have been suddenly put out of business, unless they had other avenues of revenue, like the manufacture of metal advertising signage or buttons, etc.

 

Hi Larry

My question looking at the odd token is; how were the blanks made?

That token looks like an ancient coin in shape, only with a stronger strike.
I believe most ancient coins looking like that (typically late Roman AE), were struck on blanks cut from hammered bronze rods.



Blanks and bronze rods:

 

Now you've got me, Svessien. I've been told they were punched from planchet strips. Many clips show evidence of a pincer type cut, partially from each side, so I am guessing the most were punched by machine. It could have been a machine almost as simple as a leather punch. I believe the punching was done with a form of die. Punching by hand from each side would not seem practical as dies would not align consistently at all.

In larger factories, like at the button companies in Connecticut, perhaps several planchets were punched at once. I have an R-7 brass token from one button companies, and have quite a few of their copper CWT's and tokens from another button company there, but none of them have clipped planchets, at all, so I think it may have been a different process.

Tokens from those two companies also have finer strikes than most CWT's. Scovill Manufacturing Company has provided every brass button for U.S military uniforms since about 1802 or so. I believe planchets may have been polished somewhat before before striking; That wouldn't have taken much in a brass factory setting with probable steam power by then. Their tokens also received upset rims; I imagine that was quite a bit trickier than planchet punching.

So in the biggest operations, I believe a circular shearing punch was used. In smaller operations, planchets for more primitive die sinkers may have been punched using the same press they would later produce tokens with, or some sort of similar press with circular dies. Many of the machines were driven by belts which ran to the machines from a steam-powered source.

But I doubt that anybody was hammering planchets out of strips with a hand punch. : )

 

It is my understanding that the government finally realized that the 1-cent coins weren't circulating because they contained nickel (at the urging of an influential nickel mine owner in Pennsylvania named Wharton). Once the government realized that small-denomination copper subsidiary coins would circulate, the nickel was removed from the cent, and the copper 2-cent piece was introduced. From what I gather from articles in Coinage and other numismatic publications, after the 1864 Act the owners of base-metal tokens were essentially left playing a game of "hot potato".

It's also interesting to note that Mr. Wharton, seeing the writing on the wall about the copper-nickel cent alloy, pushed for nickel to be used in the 3-cent piece instead-- accounting for the introduction of the nickel 3-cent piece in 1865 (and the introduction of the nickel 5-cent piece in 1866).

 

Thanks! Sometimes I see some coins with a second rim (not a collar though), but that's just probably either from a vending machine, or the way the coin was pressed down. It's all very interesting on how these are made and created! But why didn't the mint stop the coins that had this collar attached to them, if they are that common?

"The Mint" never made Civil War Tokens, ryan. They were 'struck' by die sinkers working in small shops, store fronts or by factories, mostly in the east, like the Waterbury Button Company and Scovill Manufacturing Company, both in Waterbury CT.

But I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that soem were fashioned in barns. Especially among Ohio and Indiana primitives. Tough I'd bet, I am not sure, yet. : )

 

Correction... Oopus #47

I did some checking and found this article on WIkipedia which refreshed my memory, and it appears you were correct, Collector1966:

"One of the best-known and commonly struck types were store cards known as 'Lindenmueller tokens,' named for New York barkeep Gustavus Lindenmueller. In 1863, Lindenmueller had more than one million of his one-cent tokens struck and placed into circulation. One of the common uses for the token was for streetcar fare. The Third Avenue Railroad company of New York, which had willingly accepted a large quantity of the Lindenmueller tokens in lieu of actual currency, asked Lindenmueller to redeem them. He refused, and the railroad had no legal recourse. Incidents such as these eventually forced the government to intervene.

"On April 22, 1864, Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1864. While the act is most remembered for the introduction of the phrase "In God We Trust" on the newly created two-cent piece, it also effectively ended the usage of Civil War tokens. In addition to authorizing the minting of the two-cent piece, the act changed the composition of the one-cent piece from a copper-nickel alloy (weighing 4.67 grams) to a lighter, less thick piece composed of 95% copper (weighing 3.11 grams). The new one-cent piece was much closer in weight to the Civil War tokens, and found greater acceptance among the public.

"While the Coinage Act made Civil War tokens impractical, the issue of their legality was decided on June 8, 1864, when Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 486, which made the minting and usage of non-government issued coins punishable by a fine of up to $2,000, a prison term of up to five years, or both. (Chapter 25 of Title 18 deals specifically with counterfeit and forgery). It did not make it illegal to own Civil War tokens, however, and evidence exists that the tokens were viewed as collectibles as early as 1863, when the first known listings of Civil War tokens were published."