I picked this up recently. Any idea why so many of the Broas Bros dies ended up clashed, shattered, and kept being used? Was the manufacturer using low quality metal? Drunk workers? Or, were they under contract to produe an excessive number of coins per die they had? Anyway, this is the less common NY-630M obverse paired with the (unshattered) same reverse. EG: Our Country / Our Country combination, instead of the Indian Head / Our Country pairing or the George Washingting / Our Country pairing. Interestingly, you can see the Indian Head clashed onto the obverse, perhaps indicating the Indian head shattered completely and they ended up muleing two reverses to make this. My apologies for any blurring - tough to use the endoscope through a SEGS slab:
I have never seen that CWT before. This one had the same design on both the obv and reverse? Do you have a reference? @johnmilton
For those who don't know about the "shattered Indian" variety, here it is. This piece is not at all scarce. How did it last for that long? Not when they were that far gone. They must have put an iron circle around that Bros die to keep it together. The catalog listing has me stumped. It is shown as NY 630-M-12ao. According the U.S. Store Card reference printed in 2014 by the Civil War Token Society, it was made with die 29315 / 29315 inc. It was struck on both sides with the same die, but with the early and late die states. I suppose the obverse was struck over on an existing token with the late state of die 29215. I can't think of any other way this could have been done, except for the fact that the "good" side is not flattened. Maybe an advanced CWT collector can explain this. I can't. The Fuld catalog notes that many Bros token dies were made for collector consumption, and this must have been one of them.
Here is photos of mine. It has some Die Clash on Pie side. https://en.numista.com/catalogue/exonumia121631.html
I'm not an advanced CWT collector, by any means. I have less than 30, but have decided to try and buy unusual ones / ones that have meaning to me. I was actually looking for the "standard" Indian Head / One Country clashed / cracked type for my collection when I found this one. My assumption was that they had more than one of each die and this was made with Die #1 / Die #2 (or #3 & #7, or whatever). Then again, my thought there was coming from comparison to the US mint, which often had 60+ dies for each year of Morgan dollars per mint, and the production numbers were probably nowhere near comparable. Broas Pies were prolific (far out of scale for a NY pie shop), but not *THAT* prolific. ETA: I was typing "Our Country" & meant "One Country". My brain is addled today.
The variety in the OP is rated as a R-9 which means there are less than ten known. There is not much chance that this piece was issued as an advertising token for Bros. It was made as a novelty 19th century collectors.
Are you sure this didn't happen with a like die being replaced upon failure. There seems to be a brockage involved.
There are at least 5 of this exact die combination currently listed on eBay. I suspect that the r-9 rating may be overstating the scarcity a bit.
I am sure that many of the CWT rarity ratings need to be revised, usually downward. As for the replacement of the worn out die with a “like die” that is possible, even probable, but it would take a close examination of each side to confirm it. Given the condition of the worn out die, that could be a challenge. All I have is the most current Fuld store card book, and that says the same die was used on both sides.
From a process standpoint, how would that work? Would a series of planchets be run through the coin press with a blank die on one side to strike the One Country design against, and then the half struck planchets would be flipped and run back through the machine? If so, I could see how a clash could occur on the blank die (perhaps when the Indian Head Pattern was being used to do a double head variety?) & then be transfered to the One Country pattern during the restriking. But that wouldn't explain the appearance of die cracks on only one side of the One Country design. And, wouldn't the clash transfer occur on both sides (at an inconsistent angle too)? The 2nd strike could obliterate the clash underneath it, but I suspect it would still be partially visible.
Being a bakery they made have found it less expensive to bake the dies used than have them manufactured.
It looks like the shattered/clashed reverse is also known paired with the shattered obverse: https://civilbattlenewyork.com/1863...ker-ny-630m-7a-ms63-rb-ngc-shattered-die.html
Ordered one of the more common IH / One Country varieties with shattered obverse. Will post pics when it arrives. Might as well get a run of all of the Broas so I'm not left wanting any unobtainable pie.
Bookworm, the OP's token was made with dies 29315/29320. The only time die 29315 is paired with itself is when one side is incused. What happens in that case is that a token gets stamped, but sticks to the other die and does not get ejected. So when the next blank enters to be stamped, it gets stamped between die 29315 and the "stuck" token, which has the image formed from die 29315 facing the blank. Upon striking, the "stuck" token will create an incuse image of die 29315. George, while the 5 ebay references do have the same die pairing, 2 of them are brass, which would have a different id number from the copper varieties, and possibly a different rarity rating. They do update rarity ratings as more information becomes known, as well as city corrections/additions and other information. Most of those updates don't become widely known until the next book is published, which can take years or decades.
