Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ Nov. 21 auction from the E Pluribus Unum Collection concluded with some wonderful struck copies of Colonial American issues, including a piece that Stack’s Bowers called “one of the most interesting of the published Massachusetts silver copies, with a long and august provenance dating to before the Civil War.”

The struck copy of a 1650-dated Pine Tree shilling was produced around 1850 and is graded About Uncirculated 50 by Professional Coin Grading Service. 

The cataloger wrote, “The dies are crude and entirely hand cut, delightfully evocative of some numismatic criminal hunched over a piece of steel (or brass) with lust for lucre on their mind.”

It was published in Sylvester Sage Crosby’s key 19th century book Early Coins of America, where the author wrote on the pros and cons of the piece’s authenticity. Stack’s Bowers concluded, “Crosby was a genius, but, alas, even the best of us get it wrong sometimes.”

The firm called the offered copy, which sold for $2,200, a fascinating relic of the earliest era of American numismatic scholarship, “and the tomfoolery such scholarship had to deal with.”

Connect with Coin World:  
Sign up for our free eNewsletter
Access our Dealer Directory  
Like us on Facebook  
Follow us on Twitter