PRINTING BLOCKS FOR COLONIAL AMERICAN COINS

One of the cool "weird" things I have in my collection is a selection of printing blocks for colonial American coins - and since the image shared by Jesse Kraft was for such a piece, it piqued my interest. I have perhaps three dozen blocks, and they are of varying ages and construction. These are the subject of an article I someday will get around to writing, but doesn't hurt to share some of them here and ask for assistance too!

 

The earliest seem to be a lead alloy that was nailed onto wooden blocks - these seem to be 1850s-1860s in nature. Above are three of these, and the next image shows them flipped, to what they would look like on the printed page. These were engraved by hand and are something of works of art in their own right! I had thought these three were used in one of Charles Bushnell's books since the top one in this photo is his signature, and the bottom two are Mott and Talbot, Alum & Lee tokens which were the subjects of his 1859 and 1860 books - but neither of those featured a printed signature, and while the token images look correct, the ones in the books have obverse and reverse spaced much further apart, with a line between them. There is a Bushnell signature in his 1864 Crumbs for Antiquarians, and while the signature is the same, the flourishment is different. So there is a mystery here to solve! This style of blocks would have been fairly expensive to make and would have been used and reused - some of Bushnell's engravings can be found directly in Crosby and elsewhere. Indeed, I've used them for my own colonial price lists for the last 30 years (though in xerox or digital form, not printed from the original blocks!).

 

Here is a copper block, also engraved by hand, but not mounted to a piece of wood - the copper was sufficiently heavy enough to not move around in the printing press (and is indeed heavier than the lead ones mounted on wood). This block matches the image used in Crosby exactly and was likely made specifically for that book. These seem to date a little later than the above style, maybe 1870-1890s.

 

And here is one on copper and mounted on wood, but more modern in manufacture. A close look at the copper image shows that it was screened and not engraved. This would be 1940s - 1970s or so. I've been told (but have not verified) that this style with screening would be used more for magazines and newspaper printing, and not for books that needed higher quality images.

The blocks that Jesse shared look to be somewhere between the second and third types here - at a guess, early 20th century, on up to 1930s. The Continental dollar one doesn't appear screened, so this era seems correct for it. An article on "early coins" in some magazine or newspaper may be where they were used - but the images don't ring a bell for me, and a look at the handful of non-numismatic magazines that featured articles on coins in my library didn't yield a match.

Fun stuff!

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
KING OF SIAM SET PRINTING PLATE BOOK SOUGHT (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n47a14.html)
MORE WHITMAN COIN IMAGE PRINTING PLATES (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n06a15.html)
QUERY: COIN PRINTING BLOCKS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n03a15.html)
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JANUARY 23, 2022 : Whitman Coin Printing Blocks (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n04a15.html)
WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: JANUARY 23, 2022 : Friedberg Book Printing Block (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n04a30.html)

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