Counterstamped 1807 Draped Bust Quarter

I picked this guy up this past weekend at a little show. I thought it was pretty neat. I'm having trouble identifying this stamp. It appears that it could be several things. Anyone seen this one before? Even if not I thought it was a neat piece and wanted to share!

 

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I've never seen it before, but there are so many....

I like the early bust coins -- even with counterstamps, etc., they're attractive to me. I just wish the stamp would be on the reverse.

 

That was one of the explanations I came across and it seemed to make the most sense here. I also came up with a couple of silversmiths... but none of those seemed very relevant to a piece in this date range.

 

Cool coin!!

 

very cool.that was quick to get some history on the stamp,impressed.

 

There is a large cent on Heritage auction with same counterstamp would be neat to assemble whole set.

 

This one sold last month.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350334180412

 

Matt
Very nice.

 

I looked this counterstamp up in my book of counterstamps by Brunk (2003), and this counterstamp is listed. The very interesting thing about this one is that Brunk lists it as a fantasy counterstamp. He has traced many specimens, and has found this stamp on coins as late as the 1840s. No American or British silversmith is known to have used such a mark during the 1840s. There are hundreds of coins, and even cast counterfeits with this R F hallmark. Known coins include US large cents, quarters, halves, English halfpennies and shillings, Spanish American silver, and other sorts of coins which would NOT have circulated side by side.

Brunk states that while the countermarked coins are old, the stamps are not genuine. He mentions the first known listing in E. Zay's Histoire monetaire des Colonies Francais (Paris, 1892: 200), where the R F counterstamp was interpreted as "Republique Francaise". Zay attributed the c'stamp to the island of Guadeloupe, whose government did countermark coins with initials in the 1790s and early 1800s. Brunk indicates that large numbers of R F fantasies were produced both in Europe and America since the 1880s, or even earlier. These items were produced for sale to collectors of French colonial and West Indies countermarked coins.

Of the many pieces that Brunk had examined, none of them appear to have circulated after stamping. All of them had XF to Uncirculated countermarks. Most genuine countermarks are quite worn, but these worn out coins with little to no wear showing on the countermarks on virtually all known examples is a sure indication that they were not made as the hallmark of a silversmith who would have placed them into circulation for advertising.

Brunk has photos of this R F counterstamp, and they match those as shown in the photos above.

 

Very nice pickup Matt!!!!

 

Neat coin. In the eyes of a TPG, are these gradeable or are they considered damage? I recently saw a $3 gold in my price range with a W countermark.

 

That is really a cool little quarter, the stamp just gives it so much character.

 

Kool koin

 

The vast majority of genuine counterstamps were made by merchants (usually with custom made one piece stamps, & were used for advertising) as well as a considerable number by individuals. I can't say for absolute certain, but I believe I have seen merchant counterstamped pieces also in slabs.

I agree with you GDJMSP, the TPGs do not seem to know the history concerning the RF stamp, along with many other bits of information relating to all sorts of exonumia. Some of the tpg errors are repeated over and over again, simply because of their lack of expertise in a given area. I had not thought about it before (I try not to think about tpgs at all), but I guess those RF counterstamps residing in slabs could be considered another instance of "fakes" being slabbed as genuine.

 

Most merchant countermarks in my collection, as well as ones I have ever seen, were by far made on regular coinage. The auction link that sunflower posted in the Coin Chat section shows some examples of merchant countermarks (the auction house calls them counterstamps) on regular coinage. Lot 81 is just one example to save you some scrolling time. That one is also a good example to show that a countermark can add tremendous value to a coin. Lot 81 is a circulated 1828 Bust half. They reference a 2007 auction for that same merchant countermark which brought $8050 (but the host coin was not mentioned).

Perhaps on a technical point, you may be correct about counterstamps being related to monetary value of an item (although there are merchant counterstamps also, such as chopmarks also). But, where I found the definition, I could not find what they called stampings made by merchants or individuals, so that definition may be a restrictive one unless you were able to find a term applying to the other types. I am a bit tired at the moment, so I may have missed something. Perhaps the merchant name/advertising type should be more correctly called a countermark. I was using the terms interchangably. In Brunk's reference, he calls everything a countermark, even those made by a monetary authority. I did a little research and could not find clarification as I either found a definition for counterstamp or countermark, but never a definition for both in the same place. Since Brunk probably knows more about these marks than anyone, I will default to his opinion that (while he lists a number of classifications) all of these stampings are considered countermarks - be they made by a government entity, merchant, private individual, or any of the subcategories thereof.

A few tidbits from Brunk's book: He estimates that perhaps as high as 5 percent of the coins circulating in some parts of the U.S. were countermarked with advertising 150 years ago. The British Isles had an even higher percentage in circulation. There were so many in England that a passing reference to the coins stamped by Pear's Soap was used conversationally when one wanted to describe something of uncountable size.

Some merchants stamped large numbers of coins. Richard Devins (Devins & Bolton Montreal) told the American Numismatic Society that he had stamped more than 180,000 coins. To use that as a benchmark for comparing proportions, Pear's Soap stamped over 250,000, and Lloyd's Newspaper may have stamped even more.

Simple initial countermarks are also listed in his book, but at least two examples of the same stamp must be known.

 

Oops, I guess I should have double quoted as my reply to your first point ended up within the quote box. Not sure how to fix that.