There was a recent thread that questioned the inclusion of William Woods' Hibernia coinage under the heading of "US coinage". Here is a coin produced in England by William Woods under royal patent (George I) for the express purpose of circulation in the American Colonies: It is the 1723 Rosa Americana Penny. Woods struck farthings, halfpennys, pennys, twopence and shillings in this style and they most certainly did circulate in the American colonies. Interestingly, this coin is not pure copper. Rather it was supposed to be an alloy called Bath Metal, a mixture of 75% brass, 24.73% zinc, and 0.27% silver. Metallurgical analysis has shown no silver so Woods cheated - imagine that? There is some evidence to suggest that these coins, due to their hardness, were struck after the planchets were heated and were struck using a drop hammer machine. This one was picked up in a Heritage auction a couple of days ago. The photos are Heritage's. I possibly overpaid for this but in my defense, this die marriage is the considerably scarcer Martin 2-F with a rarity rating of URS-4. The other 1723 penny is the Martin 2-E, rarity URS-11. How can you tell the difference? The 2-F has a dot after the date whereas the 2-E does not. What does the Universal Rarity Scale say about these ratings? An 11 means 500 to 999 examples surviving. A 4 means 5 to 8 surviving examples. So, I'm very happy with the pick-up. All information on the coinage presented here was taken from Bowers' "Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins".
Gorgeous!! This is high on my list right now. I have several in my watch list and I've been on some other sites shopping examples. Only a few really do it for me. Plus now that you have me doing my research before I buy..... purchases are taking much longer,,, but way more thought out and appreciated. I need to get Vermont and new Hampshire..... then Im gonna really hunker down on one of these. Thanks for posting!
The colonists didn't like either the Rosa Americana or the Hibernia pieces - some colonies such as Massachusetts-Bay and New Jersey flat out banned the coinage in their colonies. Massachusetts-Bay issued small denomination paper coins in an effort to prohibit these pieces from circulating. Money - the shortage of, the short-changing by the British, and the illegal issuance of - was a major but rather not well known behind the scenes cause of the American Revolution. What little money the Crown did authorise for the colonies was of inferior quality. And the Crown quite frankly didn't provide much even for the British Isles.
Good luck on New Hampshire, I think there are only a dozen or so known! I'm pretty sure you would be looking at at least a 5 figure price.
I really like the Wood coinage. The Rosa Americanas were struck in halfpenny, penny and two pence coins for circulation, Hibernias were struck in farthing and halfpenny denominations. The Rosa Americanas were virtually half the weight of the regular English coinage, so were quite unpopular in the American colonies, the Hibernias actually circulated more heavily in America than the Rosas did.
This is a Rosa Americana I picked up at a coin show in Massachusetts about 10 years ago. Corroded and damaged but still shows enough of the design for me to pick it up. Also, it was very inexpensive if I recall. I never attributed it.
