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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;BRandM, post: 1086134, member: 22729&quot;]This stamp has been pretty well researched and some of the most knowledgeable people who study these (Brunk, Rulau, Bowers) feel that it&#039;s a gunsmith stamp. Apparently, there are one or two surviving rifles that have a stamp of like or similar style applied to them. If the coin&#039;s counterstamp can be matched to the rifle&#039;s stamp we can be pretty sure that the maker was a gunsmith. I say &quot;pretty sure&quot; because it wasn&#039;t uncommon in the 19th Century for merchants to stamp their own names on products they sold, but didn&#039;t actually manufacture themselves. Some of the marks found on silverware for example have been found to be those of silver retailers, jewelers etc., not actual silversmiths.The same holds true for some retailers of guns. Gun historian Henry Kauffman contends that John Demuth was one of these retailers, but not a gunsmith in his own right.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>As far as someone having some fun with a bunch of punches, that&#039;s not likely. Only a person who made these stamps for a living would have so many to &quot;play&quot; with. Manufacturing of them was time-consuming and expensive in those days and weren&#039;t made because there was nothing better to do. One example of a Demuth stamp has four other names punched on it in addition to his own, some of different style and size. This suggests that this example might be a test coin used by the maker to see how his stamps struck up. Brunk feels the issuer may be a stamp maker. My research also indicates that, but who knows for sure. Thanks for your interest Zeplyn.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Bruce[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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