"Penny-farthing Pedal Pusher": pictorial love token on 1876 Seated Liberty dime

"Penny-farthing Pedal Pusher": pictorial love token on 1876 Seated Liberty dime



Larger obverse picture
Larger reverse picture

Host coin: 1876 USA Seated Liberty dime.
Obverse: original Seated Liberty design, unaltered.
Reverse: Victorian "penny-farthing" (high wheel) bicycle in landscape with foliage and cattail plant in foreground, bird in sky.

Ex- "whitewolfcoins", eBay, 06/21/2017.

This is a wonderful high-Victorian love token charm, anonymous since it was carved without any engraved initials, simply for the sake of art alone. It likely served as a charm on a lady's bracelet or gentleman's watch fob. The engraving is excellent and the whimsical subject matter evokes the era perfectly. Furthermore, the engraving is likely closely contemporary to the host coin, since the penny-farthing, high-wheel bicycle went out of fashion in the 1880s with the development of the safety bicycle, which more closely resembles the kind we are familiar with today.

Wikipedia article: Penny-farthing

 

I couldn't pass this one up. Seems appropriate, for the first day of summer.

I've been gradually working in the background on rebuilding the "holey" coin collection on my trademark hat, with nice love tokens this time around instead of gold. (I sold all the holey gold coins off the hat during the recession, when I was laid off and fell on hard times.)

Maybe before the summer's out, I hope to catch up on photographing this collection, which will be my secondary focus behind the primary "Eclectic Box" slabbed set many of you are more familiar with.

This is my more "budget-friendly" sideline, since the coins will mostly have two-figure pricetags instead of three- or four-figure ones. At ninety bucks, this piece was on the high end of "two-figure", but well worth it to a love token specialist.

The same seller had one with a Victorian fire engine on it. It is no longer listed. I asked if he still has it. If so, I might have to scoop that one up later.

 

Update: I did that very thing.