"1787" Fugio 1C New Haven Restrike, Copper, BN MS(PCGS#916)

December 2020 U.S. Coins Auction

拍卖行

Stack's Bowers

批号

2096

等级

AU58BN

价格

7,472

详细说明

"1787" (ca. 1860) Fugio Copper. "New Haven Restrike." Newman 104-FF, W-17560. Rarity-3. Copper. AU-58 (PCGS). Marbled deep rose, autumn-orange and golden-brown patina provides a richly original appearance. Both sides are near-fully lustrous with a sharp strike and predominantly smooth, satiny texture. By the late 1850s, numismatics in the United States had advanced to the point where contemporary collectors avidly sought examples of many types of colonial and early Federal era coins for inclusion in their cabinets. According to numismatic lore, in 1858 C. Wyllys Betts discovered three sets of 1787-dated Fugio copper dies on the site of the Broome & Platt store in New Haven, Connecticut. Betts' discovery was supposedly made while rendering services to coin dealer Horatio N. Rust who, circa 1860, had Fugio coppers struck in copper alloy, silver and gold from these dies. These coins have come to be known as the "New Haven Restrikes." Unfortunately, modern numismatic scholarship has proved that very little of the foregoing account is actually true. What is definitely true is that the increased popularity of coin collecting in the United States of the 1850s made it profitable to produce and sell reproductions of the historically significant Fugio coppers. The firm primarily responsible, however, appears to be the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, which used newly created dies to strike these coins. Horatio Rust still seems to have been involved, but only as a distributor of these pieces or, perhaps, the person who commissioned Scovill Manufacturing Company to create the dies and/or coins. Neither from New Haven nor restrikes, the "New Haven Restrikes" differ in detail from original Fugio coppers, particularly on the reverse where the rings are narrow instead of wide. Most examples of this type are struck in copper, bronze or brass, although rarer silver and gold impressions are also known. PCGS# 916. NGC ID: 2B8S. Click here for certification details from PCGS.