1652 Pine Tree Shilling, Authenticated!

A while back i inherited this coin from my grandmother and was not sure if it was authentic, so just recently i posted on this forum asking whether or not it was real. alot of people said it look to be real and i matched it with an Noe. 11. I sent the coin to LostDutchman and he sent it to PCGS to be graded an authenticated. He recently got it back from them and it is indeed authentic but due to clipping the coin received a grade pf VF details. LostDutchman offered to buy the coin for $1800, but i have decided to have him send it back and i will sell it on ebay or something after keeping it for a little while.


here is the original thread: http://www.cointalk.com/t222259-2/#ixzz2PkgUdnFV

 

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That is amazing! How I wish I could have been handed one of those, lol. Congrats and if it was me, i would pass it down in the family. Do you have any idea how your grandmother came to have it? I am just curious.

Regards,
Stan

 

Incredible :thumb:

Don't hear stories like this often. Glad to hear the outcome was favorable for once!

 

Good start, maybe you have some more cool coins from you grandmother? I think it is important to leave some notes about ones coins for those enheriting them.

 

Happy to help!

 

Congrats! Beautiful coin!

I agree with coinman1974 100%...if you don't absolutely need the money, keep it in the family as your Grandmother did. That way, others can experience the joy you feel now. 1652 Pine Tree shillings are like beach front property...they ain't making any more of them (not authentic ones, anyway).

...and that's another point! It seems a shame that PCSG wouldn't grade your coin. Shaving (or clipping) coins was a common practice long ago. It's part of the coin's history; it's part of numismatic history. It only makes the coin more interesting.

I understand if the coin was altered (cleaned, whizzed, etc) to give the appearance of a higher grade...that would be an ungradable coin. In this case...an ancient clipping...I would grade it with a comment. That's almost what they did...but not quite.

 

The details designation won't matter to a potential buyer of this coin. What's important is its authenticity.

 

True

 

Did she leave you just this one coin or are there other gems you care to share?

 

Congrats and thanks for sharing it with us! Wish you the best with the future of the coin regardless of what you decide to do with it.

 

I am glad your coin turned out to be genuine. I knew the 'fabric' of it was correct when you first posted it. Congratulations

As mentioned, I happen to have the exact same variety in my collection - Variety with 'H' missing in Massathusets.
My example weighs 68 grains, and thus considered to have a full, unclipped planchet. The interesting thing, however, is yours looks to have as much if not more details and devices remaining on the planchet, but weighs only 55 grains. I guess the difference must lie in the thickness of the planchet, with yours being probably thinner than my example. Whatever the case, as mentioned, clipping was very common with these, so the fact yours is clipped takes away little from its value, specially considering a good amount of detail is still showing.

 

She has a box of coins, not all of them are old but i looked through it a couple years ago when i was real interested in coin collecting and this caught my eye. She told me i could pick out one coin for my birthday and another for Christmas, so i got this one and a $5 half eagle I couldn't say if there are any more valuable coins in there.

Yeah, i think once i get it back i will think about it before i sell it. I am only 16 but i honestly dont need the money so i will think about keeping it.

I asked my dad and he said she got it from her dad(my great grandfather).

 

Trivia question: why is it clever that these coins are dated 1652, even though they may have been struck later?

 

My book says 'the most likely explanation (for the continued usage of the date as 1652 although struck later) seems to be simply this is the year the coinage was authorized'

Do I win?

 

Not quite. Hint: check with the king of England.

 

Because when a new King of England came to the throne in 1660 he had the right to mint coins from there on so the colonists just minted them with the date 1652 so they could still use them
It goes somewhat like that, and i believe they minted them like that for around 30 years!

 

It's an unprovable theory, but it makes sense. The coinage was authorized of course, but NOT by the crown - by Bostonians! There was no king at the time, and the colonists desperately needed coinage, so they took the matter into their own hands. Nobody knew what the outcome in England could be at any given moment, so repeating the date could have been a clever ploy to avoid confrontation with the British crown, if it were suddenly reinstated. If it ever came to that, the colonists could have said, "Hey, we made these in 1652. Where were you?"

 

ah, i see. so did i win?

 

Yes, but you already won with that coin!

 

Yes, coinage was a Royal prerogative and the King had not seen fit to allow the colonists to strike their own coinage. But when Cromwell defeated Charles I and had him beheaded there was no longer a King. So the colonists took this as their chance to create their own coins. But to play it safe they froze the date so if the Monarchy was restored they could claim that the coins were all made when there was no King.