JOURNAL OF EARLY AMERICAN NUMISMATICS V2N2

This week the ANS received the press proofs for the December 2019 issue of the Journal of Early American Numismatics (JEAN). The proofs have been approved and JEAN 2:2 will be mailed to subscribers starting next week, and should be received by everyone by the end of the year or first week of January. This issue is again a book-sized edition with over 200 pages of articles. The December issue is anchored by a large monograph on Fugio restrikes by Christopher McDowell and Julia Casey.

This Fugio article answers many of the mysteries of the Fugio restrikes. Based upon the evidence presented in the article, the Fugio "restrike" dies found by C. Wylys Betts and Horatio N. Rust in New Haven were engraved in 1788 for use as part of the original Fugio coinage contract and not, as generally believed, mid-19th-century fakes. Although the breadth and scope of the monograph is difficult to capture in truncated form, it is worth sharing one of the many new discoveries:

This is an advertisement from March 6, 1828, for the American Museum in New York, indicating that the museum had a Fugio die (the American Museum actually had a pair of Fugio dies—an obverse and a reverse, as detailed and proven in the article). Standing alone, this advertisement does not demonstrate that the dies found in New Haven in 1859 are authentic, but taken in conjunction with a host of other new discoveries, it is a piece of the puzzle.

One of the difficulties past researchers have encountered with the Fugio restrikes is that the number of dies in existence combined with the dies known to have been used to mint the coins exceeds the number that Rust and Betts claim were recovered in New Haven. Research presented in this article shows that possibly as many as 12 Fugio "restrike" die pairs survived into the 19th-century, and only roughly half of the then existing dies were found by Betts and Rust in New Haven.

The remaining 6 die pairs have been attributed to Charles Ira Bushnell, but research clears him of making these dies. The three extant Fugio restrike dies now in the ANS collection originate from the 1859 New Haven discovery. A fourth die, now located in a Connecticut museum, was also originally in the hardware store where Rust and Betts found the New Haven dies, but was removed prior to 1859. The obverse Fugio "restrike" die now in Yale University's collection was not part of the New Haven discovery, and the article argues that the Yale die was one of the dies exhibited at the American Museum in 1828.

The entire article must be read to understand the full story of the Fugio restrike dies, including when, where, and why these dies were made and how they survived the closure of the Connecticut mint in 1788.

The December issue of JEAN contains many other fabulous articles on a wide-range of colonial numismatic topics expressed in the Index. This issue is sure to be referenced by researchers and collectors for decades to come.

Christopher R. McDowell,
Editor, JEAN

Editor's Preface

The Authentic Fugio Restrike Dies: Newly Explained Through the Biographies of C. Wyllys Betts, Horatio N. Rust, Charles Ira Bushnell, and Others
Christopher R. McDowell and Julia Casey

The Duyckinck Family and Copper Coinage
Gary A. Trudgen

Samuel Atlee's Plea for Compassion
Gary A. Trudgen

The Eric P. Newman Papers on the Newman Numismatic Portal
Len Augsburger

Brief Analysis of Colonial Paper Money of Spanish New Orleans (1782–1796)
Ángel O. Navarro-Zayas

To subscribe, visit: http://numismatics.org/store/cnl/ or email Emma Pratte at epratte@numismatics.org .

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