"Ten Cents for the Tinsmith": Trade-related folk art carving on 1853 Seated Liberty dime

"Ten Cents for the Tinsmith": Trade-related folk art carving on 1853 Seated Liberty dime



Larger obverse picture
Larger reverse picture

Host coin: 1853 USA Seated Liberty dime, arrows at date.
Obverse: original Seated Liberty design, unaltered, with traces of solder from an old mount. Reverse: 19th century tradesman's tools, probably for tinsmithing.

Ex- "lotsofmotts" (eBay), 7/18/2016.

Many thanks to the early respondents to this thread on Collectors Universe, who helped me identify these tools. I recognized the hammer at the bottom, of course, and the tin snips on the right. That appears to be a set of dividers on the left. That basket-like cylinder in the middle with the tray underneath it and the tool sticking into it is apparently a charcoal burner, which a tinsmith would swing around in the air when he needed to heat up the coals inside.

This interesting piece was rather modestly priced for a pictorial love token, and I suspect I only got to it because it was listed only in the eBay Seated dimes category. Had the seller also listed it under the love token category, somebody else would have probably snapped it up first.

Below: Illustration of tinsmithing tools and workshop from Diderot's Encyclopédie, ca. 1751-1772



Tinsmith (Wikipedia article)

This used to be part of my Engraved/Counterstamped/Oddball Type Set, my second exonumia collection involving engraved pieces like love tokens and such. I never settled on a title for the collection, but usually referred to it as my "Oddball" set. I sold this coin and much of the set in a late-2016 purge, but am not done collecting love tokens yet. I have enjoyed building two collections of them and actually joined the Love Token Society, which is the first time I've joined a specialist numismatic organization.