"Relic of a Short Life": "JASPER DILDAY" love token on ca. 1867-1869 Shield nickel

"Relic of a Short Life": "JASPER DILDAY" love token on ca. 1867-1869 Shield nickel



Larger obverse picture
Larger reverse picture

Host coin: ca. 1867-69 USA Shield nickel.
Obverse: "JASPER DILDAY" counterstamped with individual letter punches, within engraved border decorations.
Reverse: original Shield nickel design, unaltered except for possible traces of old mounting.

Ex- "acsb-rich", eBay, 11/13/2015.

Aside from Shield nickels being slightly less common host coins for love tokens, this piece is largely unexceptional, though the work on it was competent enough. I normally would not have considered it, because I prefer the host coin dates to be visible on my love tokens. However, when I noticed this piece featured both a first and last name, and a reasonably uncommon last name, I decided to try and see if I could find Jasper Dilday.

And I did!

Sources vary as to his birthyear, but he was reportedly born around 1855 and died in 1879. This is not only contemporaneous with our host coin, but also helps narrow the date of the engraving down between 1867 (since there are no rays on the reverse of the nickel) and 1879 (the year Jasper Dilday is said to have died). And though as of this writing I do not know the cause, he died young, as so many people did in the 19th century.

(Shield nickel specialist Howard, of www.shieldnickels.net, informs me that this host coin can be even more narrowly dated by the reverse hub alone. So the host coin would have been dated ca. 1867-1869 while the engraving would date ca. 1867-1879 as mentioned above, extrapolating from Jasper Dilday's death date. Thanks, Howard!)

Yes, it's possible that there was more than one Jasper Dilday, but this one seems to fit the period of this coin perfectly. I'll bet it's him.

The thing that excited me most about researching Jasper Dilday was that I found he had a memorial page on findagrave.com, and it featured his photograph!

That's when I knew I had to buy this piece!

Except for famous pedigrees, how often can we numismatists say exactly who owned a coin in our collection?

And how often does a photograph of that person survive, to let their face stare back at us from the past?

Here is Jasper Dilday himself, as a young man of around fifteen years old, circa 1870. He would have been only about 24 when he died.



Here is the information from his findagrave.com memorial page.

It seems he lived long enough to marry, but his wife Nancy also died young, only a year after he did. She would have been only 21. Perhaps it was she who gave him the coin above?

Though now sold, this was once part of my "Oddball Set" of exonumia.