Five Facts
Gerald Tebben goes behind the scenes and explores many offbeat trails in bringing to the forefront the long-lost information that makes coins so special in "Coin Lore."
?Odd uses for coins: Taking a bite out of coins
Folklore remedies include tying a small silver coin, such as
a dime, around a baby’s neck as an amulet or using a large silver coin as a
teething ring.
While the county child protection agency might frown on the
practice, one recent posting on a genealogy website advised, “What you do is
you put a hole in the top of it with an icepick, and then you put a fishing
string through the hole, and tie it around their neck about midway where the
Adam’s apple would be just a little lower then [sic] the Adam’s apple. Right
where the windpipe or that indenture is in your throat. And leave it there
until all teeth are in. Make sure you tie it up high enough where the child
cannot put the dime in their mouth.”
A holed 1780s Spanish real was found during excavations at a
slave cabin at Virginia’s Poplar Forest. In a 2011 article in Northeast Historical Archaeology,
researcher Lori Lee describe the piece: “It is heavily worn and bears two deep
impressions that some dental experts have identified as probable teeth marks.”
She notes, “Stephen McCray, born into slavery in Alabama,
recounted to an interviewer in Oklahoma: ‘A dime was put ‘round a teething
baby’s neck to make it tooth easy and it sho’ helped too.’ ”
A.G. Heaton, who popularized collecting by Mint mark,
complained about the practice in an August 1903 article in The Numismatist.
“Many scarce silver pieces have been also bored to suspend
in some way, either for teething infants or because their date happed to be
that of someone’s birth or marriage,” he said.
In 1955 ANA member L.A. Pettitt wrote about his budding
collection of teething-ring dollars.
He wrote, “Americans have always been practical people and
in the early days when the time came for baby's teething ring, the big dollar
with a hole and string came into use. The string looped around the baby's neck
became a plaything and a practical teething ring for generations. At present, I
have one of these dollars, an 1802 over 1 which came to me from a lady in
Trenton who said it had been in her family since the early 1800s until she sold
it to me. Two others, which came to me from Alex Kaptik of the Philadelphia
Coin Club, are dated 1795 and 1799.
“The latest acquisition with a string on it, an 1844 silver
dollar, came from Lansdale, Pa., and had been used by the babies in this family
for nearly 100 years. I love these old dollars and was prompted to collect them
because of the prices of fine dollars of this era.”
He concluded, “In looking at my four teething ring dollars
my thoughts often turn to, ‘How many tiny teeth did these old dollars help to
bring through?’ As they hang above my desk these coins bring many pleasant
thoughts.”