STEVE D'IPPOLITO ON NOVODELS AND FANTASY PIECES

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V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 1, January 5, 2014, Article 15

The Confederate cents may be fantasies, but the 1804 dollar should not be called such, in my opinion. They were struck by the US Mint in 1834, just dated 1804. You can call them novodels or whatever, but they are not fantasies, as I understand the term.

The 1913 nickel issue is a fantasy, I guess, but I call that one a clandestine issue, as it was from Mint dies, just struck in secrecy, like the 1884 and 1885 Trade dollars (thank you, A. Loudon Snowden for these two Trade dollars and for not melting the two Half Unions!).

This time, I'll agree with John Dannreuther. It's important when throwing terms about like "fantasy piece" around to be careful the entire definition applies. The 1804 dollar is indeed a novodel, and the 1913 nickel is best described as clandestine (I can't think of another parallel case off the top of my head)

The term novodel comes out of Russian numismatics, novo (ново)=new and del' (дель)=made or done, roughly), because the Imperial Mint made lots and lots of them over the decades. Some people collect them avidly, enough to drive the prices above originals, and others (like me) avoided them.

Russian numismatists will even make distinctions between different classes of novodels. For example: 1) dates that originally did exist off of dies very close to the originals (there may be a die variety difference which clues the knowledgeable person into the fact that this particular piece is a novodel even though it looks to the casual glance "just like" the other pieces of that denomination and date--early 19th century small silver is like this--buy a copy of R. W. Julian's book and check the crown on the reverse), 2) coins obviously different from the original (such as being struck in collar when the original wasn't, and on an obviously not-all-that-faithfully recreated die, or with much better workmanship), and then 3) there are novodels of dates and denominations that didn't originally exist (such as silver Siberian pieces), those sometimes are called fantasy novodels, but the key word is novodel, not fantasy. It's a novodel if it was a sanctioned mint strike after the fact. There are more possible classes. Don't take my numbering of classes as meaningful, my references have different and longer lists in them--there isn't an "official" list of kinds of novodels that I know of.

(Incidentally, just continuing to use dies into the next year because they were too expensive to just throw away, doesn't count as a novodel. Otherwise some 1803 dollars, actually minted in 1804 and leading to reported mintages of dollars in 1804, would be novodels. Ironically, those would be the very dollars that caused the whole mess in the first place, since their appearance in mint records caused collectors to seek 1804-dated dollars and created the demand for them that, ultimately, the mint "helpfully" filled with a novodel.)

The 1804 dollar clearly qualifies as a novodel since it is a mint product produced after the date on the coin for the benefit of collectors, and we know it as such from the shape of the denticles if nothing else. In a way it should fall under the third group in my list of examples above, because there were no original 1804 dollars. On the other hand, at the time people probably thought that there were original 1804 dollars because they were relying on the mintage numbers, so as far as intent goes it falls into one of the other groups. And it wasn't totally ridiculous like many "fantasy novodels" are. Whether you regard the denticles as a subtle enough difference to lump it into the first or second group I named above, is a judgment call.

Incidentally, the Russians pronounce it "nuh-vah-DYEL." Which I suspect most Americans wouldn't recognize because of palatalization and the vowel shifts in unstressed syllables, so I'll typically Americanize it to "NO-vo-del" or might half-heartedly try to keep the word's Russian roots and say "no vo DEL."