Found these two colonial coppers in a club member's foreign box that he brings to every club meeting for members to go through. Found these two coins and paid a dollar a piece for them. Redbook prices for coins that looked like them were at minimum $50 in good. Now these aren't even close to G4s, but I thought $1 dollar was still a steal. Now I'm going through Bowers' Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins trying to find what they truly are and trying to attribute them. This is very hard in the condition they are in, but is a fun challenge. I'm pretty sure the really dark one is a conneticuit copper and the more red one a Machin's Mills Copper, which were contemporary counterfeits from what I am reading. If you have any further ideas as to attribution or value, please shoot away!
Now that I am reading more and looking at more examples, the two are probably be 18th century british half pennys. Oh well. At least I feel like I learned a lot about both the conneticuit coppers and Machin Mills coins.
I didn't want to burst your bubble, or even worse, be wrong..but I thought the second one looked awful similar to a Brittania penny.
I think the first is a contemporary counterfeit British half penny, but not a Machins. I think the second is just a regular British half penny from the 1740's
connecticut copper ****************** I taught a small coin collecting class last fall at the local adult education center. One of the students brought in a heavily worn and cruddy old copper. You could just barely make out the letters CON around the rim. So I guessed it was a Connecticut copper. Even though I told him not to clean it he did and brought it to the next class. It looked better and you could see the details better. We brought it to two coin shows and let some experts look at it. Sure enough it is a 1787 Connecticut copper. What is interesting is that back in the day when they let you pick the dump is where he found it. A funeral parlor threw out a very old couch that was in the funeral home. The student cut open the back of the couch with a pocket knife and the coin fell out.
