Featured The Great Migration to America - Please post coins/medals of any period which link UK and America

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Informative item. Fast and easy to read --packed with lots of facts and events.
A+ if I was grading. Thank you.

 

Thanks very much for the history: I like this era also and really appreciate your writeup. So much so that when I saw a nice Charles I crown-sized piece dated 1642 last year (Stack's sale ~ Aug, 2016) I bought one. Always wanted a nice crown of Chas I but his are undated & I enjoy something more with a date. Aside from a few smaller siege pieces that leaves only the bigger X and XX shillings if one wants something dated from the English Civil War. This one is the XX (20) shillings, Oxford mint. Many of these pieces have doubled lettering but this one is clearly struck which is an important consideration for me.


Unfortunately it was cleaned, not abrasively so but enough that the slabbing services just called it "details": I think "VF details". The lack of numerical grade means that it was pretty cheap as many bigger collectors, are looking for stuff in ms-65 or better grades (see Heritage's D. Moore collection, auctioning this Jan, for illustration).

This one is also pedigreed to "The Rye Collection". I have no idea what the Rye collection was or when it was sold. These silver Pounds are uncommon enough that it should be traceable somehow...

I should also mention that normally I collect Latin America, and Ancient Greece, Rome, and contemporary Empires. Thus an English coin is a bit of an outlier for me although I do have a few thalers. Actually I've a 1633 thaler of Polmerania (Poland/Germany) in mint state.

 

I own this Virginia halfpenny from 1773:

There was a chronic shortage of circulating coinage in Britain's American colonies. Much of this was a result of British monetary policy, which wanted to see specie (gold and silver) flowing from the colonies to the mother country, not the other way around. Copper or bronze coinage was often not worth the expense of shipping overseas. So the colonists made do with whatever foreign coins they could get their hands on, as well as various private tokens, unofficial and counterfeit issues, as well as various non-coin substitutes such as paper money, wampum (Native American bead money), and commodities such as tobacco and furs. The Virginia halfpenny of 1773 was an exception: officially authorized by the British government and struck in Britain, then shipped to the colonies for use. Note the overall very British design, but with "VIRGI-NIA" along the reverse edges. These coins were apparently well-received by the colonists, and many have been found by metal detectorists, especially in Virginia and Maryland. I am primarily an ancients collector, but I couldn't resist the history behind this coin.

 

Rosa Americana Pattern Penny 1723



This penny is one of William Wood's creations from the patent granted to strike coin for the American colonies in 1722. Curiously this one is a pattern piece that was not used for the circulation strikes - the pellets in the centre of the rose are the giveaway - but somehow the piece did see circulation though not for long as these pieces were quite unpopular in the American colonies due to their diminutive size and perception of being cheated out of metal. Many of the colonies, notably Massachusetts-Bay, banned them outright and even circulated small change notes to drive them out of circulation.



William Wood's patent for striking coinage also applied to Ireland, which saw it's own unique coinage in farthings and halfpennies - which quite unremarkably were received in a similar fashion to the Rosa Americana coins in the N. American colonies. Many of them were thus sent off to the American colonies where they were not anymore popular than the Rosa pieces but necessity outweighed vanity in some of the colonies so they circulated up until the very early 19th century.

 

The Massachusetts Silver Coinage- Pine Tree Shilling, struck 1677-1674.

Coinage produced by order of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to provide the colony with its own silver coinage and thus facilitate commerce.

The Boston Shilling.

''As early as 1650, the colony of Massachusetts Bay was a commercial success. But an inadequate supply of money put its future development in jeopardy. England was not inclined to send gold and silver coins to the colonies, for they were in short supply in the mother country.

Taking matters into their own hands, Boston authorities allowed two settlers, John Hull and Robert Sanderson, to set up a mint in the capital in 1652. The two were soon striking silver coinage - shillings, sixpences, and threepences. Nearly all of the new coins bore the same date: 1652.

This was the origin of America's most famous colonial coin, the pine tree shilling. The name comes from the tree found on the obverse. It may symbolize one of the Bay Colony's prime exports, pine trees for ships' masts. Massachusetts coinage not only circulated within that colony, but was generally accepted throughout the Northeast, becoming a monetary standard in its own right.

Why the 1652 date? Some believe that it was intended to commemorate the founding of the Massachusetts mint, which did occur in 1652. Others believe the choice was a reflection of larger political events. Coinage was a prerogative of the King. In theory, these colonists had no right to strike their own coins, no matter how great their need.

But in 1652, there was no king. King Charles had been beheaded three years previously, and England was a republic. The people in Massachusetts may have cleverly decided to put that date on their coinage so that they could deny any illegality when and if the monarchy were reestablished.

This "1652" shilling is likely to have been minted around 1670. In 1682, the Hull/Sanderson mint closed after closer royal scrutiny of the operation''.

In this variety the word MASATHUSETS is spelled out without an 'H'.
Noe-11.

 

Cool coin, Eduard

 

Here is another coin of British origin with a strong connection to america -
The 1791 George Washington Cent.

It was minted in England with the hope of obtaining a contract with the U.S government for use in the U.S.

Here is a brief history of this coinage.

''In the hopes of obtaining a contract from the U.S. government to produce copper coins the firm of W. and Alexander Walker of Birmingham England commissioned John Gregory Hancock to design a copper cent. Hancock designed two different cents, each with a bust of George Washington on the obverse and an American eagle of the reverse. Hancock worked at Obadiah Westwood's mint in Birmingham, England, where the coppers were minted.

The two coppers are know as the Large Eagle and the Small Eagle cents.

The Walkers had a cask of these cents shipped to his American associate, the firm of Thomas Ketland and Son, in Philadelphia. They were to distribute the coins to cabinet officers, senators and congressmen in the hopes of securing a federal minting contract. It has been assumed the cask was a a normal size hundredweight barrel, which would accommodate 112 pounds or about 4,000 coppers. It has been further conjectured about 2,500 of the coppers were the Large Eagle variety and about 1,500 were Small Eagle cents. Although the coins were well made no contract was awarded. George Washington rejected the idea of having his portrait on coins as overly monarchical and he also rejected the notion of contract minting. His desire was to open a national mint to control coin production. Nevertheless, the some four thousand copper cents that had been sent over were put in circulation.

Following this unplanned issue, no presidential portraits were found on government issued coins until the Lincoln penny of 1909.''

Here is my example of the small eagle variety.

 

Excellent coin Eduard. This is a coin I've always wanted to own and perhaps one of the reasons why I no collect US. Historically significant US or US Colonial coinage is very expensive. The fact that it is [apparently] unslabbed means that you can record the weight and maybe eventually have it tested via nondestructive SEM to get the surface silver % and hence composition.

Among US coins, the ones I like best are the colonials and some weird esoteric issues. Also your write up on the Washington Cent is very interesting. I've recently bid on some fugios but somehow despite there being like 50 of them at auction I'm unable to snag a single one!!! I'm a merit badge counselor for coin collecting for Boy Scouts and one of the requirements is to draw 5 US colonial coins. Thus I'd love to get a fugio, large planchlet Mass shilling, or pewter Continental to show them as I do a bit of a coin show before the class.

I do have the 1773 Virginia half penney, better than the one here, no damage, and bought for $17.50 out of a coin shop in Philadelphia as well as a flock of other Colonials.