THE ENCASED HALF DIME MYSTERY

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 32, August 7, 2016, Article 32

They say two heads are better than one, and by extension, three heads are better than two. That seems to be the case with finding a plausible solution to the longstanding numismatic mystery of certain encased half dimes. With permission, below is an excerpt from an article by Stephen A. Crain, William D. Hyder, and Fred Holabird in the Summer 2016 issue of The Gobrecht Journal, a publication of the Liberty Seated Collectors Club. -Editor

Seated Liberty half-dime collector Stephen Crain approached TAMS member Paul Cunnigham with a question he addressed to many dealers, “Do you know what my encased half dime might be? Have you ever seen one before?” Paul introduced Stephen to the TAMS Journal editors, Bill Hyder and Fred Holabird. Now, the conversation proceeded anew.

When Stephen first began his quest, he had five odd Seated Liberty half dimes encased in a heavy metal that he believed to be zinc. After showing them to a number of dealers and inquiring as to what they might be, he still had no answers. However, he acquired four additional examples of the odd items.

Stephen published his collection of these oddities in the Fall 2014 issue of The Gobrecht Journal, published by the Liberty Seated Collectors Club. With no answers forthcoming by Fall 2015, the journal editor granted permission for TAMS to adapt the article to widen the net in search of answers. Fred believed the answer could likely be found in a tantalizing letter to a newspaper editor that Crain cited in his article. The letter commented on an 1849 lecture delivered in the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. The writer mentioned a “half dime set in zinc” placed in a person’s hand. Fred’s interest in the Gold Rush era attracted his attention to a statement in the letter that gold instead of silver might serve the purpose of “allaying the California fever.”

Stephen Crain did the original work. Fred and I took on the task of finding more information by re-publishing the original article in the LSCC after a conversation with Stephen. Preparing our layout, I took a shot at my own review following up on a comment from Fred. That led to the article as published. One of my goals as president of TAMS and co-editor of the TAMS Journal has been to foster cooperation with other numismatic organizations. That led to the simultaneous publication of our article in the Gobrecht Journal and the TAMS Journal.

This is a great example of collaboration in numismatic research - an exonumia item incorporating a regular issue U.S. coin perfectly straddles the specialty areas of the two organizations.

The article goes on to list 13 known facts about the objects Stephen had assembled. See the original article for those details. -Editor

The letter appeared in the Frederic Douglass’ Paper on October 19, 1849, and it reported on the writer’s observations at a lecture held in the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Corinthian Hall hosted political lectures, anti-slavery lectures, séances, and lecturers on the latest healing fads.

The letter, dated October 10, mentions that the lecture dealt with the influence of mind upon mind. The demonstrations involved placing a half-dime set in zinc in the hands of the volunteer subjects. With a lucky Google search, we learned that it was the Rev. John Bovee Dods who arrived in Rochester in early October to lecture on and demonstrate the power of Electrical Psychology (his own branch of mesmerism or hypnotism) to cure disease.

The diameters of the encased half dimes collected by Stephen vary in size from a maximum of 29.83 mm to a minimum of 26.30 mm. The thickness of the objects also varied greatly; no two the same. They range from a maximum of 11.01 mm to a minimum of 5.27 mm. In other words, they fit comfortably in the palm of the hand as we all can attest after handling the nine examples presented to us. Two of them appear to have a copper core, another appears to have a silver core, but none have been tested. They certainly seem to fit the description of the half dimes mentioned in the letter to the newspaper.

God Bless Dr. Google. Search engines are a powerful tool in the hands of competent researchers. This wasn't a 5th grade homework assignment - it can take a careful selection of keyword terms and discerning eye to review the results in search of the desired gold nugget of information. It takes experience to know what you're looking at. Of course, sometimes you do just get lucky. In any case, credit must also be given to the individual or organization that first digitized the information the team was able to find with their search. -Editor

So how does Dods’ electrical psychology relate to the zinc encased half dimes?

The discovery of electricity and galvanism allowed Dods to move beyond simple hypnosis. Dods describes his healing practice in his lectures presented to the U.S. Congress that were published as The Philosophy of Mesmerism and Electrical Psychology (various printings and publishers from the 1840s to the 1880s, modern reprints are still available):

Take pure zinc and silver, with a copper wire, as a conductor, passed through zinc, so as to come in contact with the silver. For convenience, take a piece of zinc the size of a cent [that would be a large cent at the time], but somewhat thicker, and imbed a five-cent piece in its center, and pass a small copper wire, as a rivet, through both. Place this coin in the palm of the hand, with the silver side up, and request him to bring it within about a foot of his eyes.

Dods continues on to describe how the subject must remain motionless, staring at the coin for 20 or 25 minutes. Most subjects will now be in the psychological state of inestimable blessing.

Remember the Richardson's Battery item from last week's article on the Presidential Auction 86? Electricity as a healer was all the rage in the 19th century, and the interaction of various metals was believed to be a key. -Editor

The galvanic reaction between zinc and silver was well known in the 1830s. One test recommended to identify counterfeit silver coins involved placing a clean strip of zinc on your tongue and silver half-dime under your tongue. When you closed your mouth and brought pressure on the two items, a distinctive taste would be detected owing to the galvanic response. If you then replaced the known silver coin with the suspect coin, you would know it was counterfeit if no taste was detected.

What we do know about these encased half dimes is that someone was making the “electro-magnetic coins” for Dods and other practioners. Dods himself must have sold them to his students as he trained them in his philosophy and practice. However, we have not found any advertisements or other printed matter that mention or picture the “coins.”

And what about the reference to gold and the Gold Rush? By October 1849, the lure of gold had many men leaving their jobs and families in search of making their fortune. We propose that the letter writer was drawing analogy between subjects being mesmerized by the shiny surface of the silver coin and the fever of shiny gold wealth that had mesmerized the nation. We leave it to the reader to decide if the evidence presented here has solved the mystery of the encased half dimes.

Many thanks to the authors both for their service to numismatics and permission to republish their work here. What a great story! -Editor