LOOSE CHANGE: FEBRUARY 20, 2022

The first-ever foreign coin struck by the U.S. was a Liberia One Cent coin in 1833. This series was intended to help fund the Back to Africa movement, which many prominent white Americans supported because they believed that emancipated slaves could never live alongside their freeborn counterparts. This coin was not included in the U.S. Mint's annual reports, probably because many people considered did not consider it a true coin but instead more of a hard times token or colonial script.

n all, the Mint produced 11,193,348,346 foreign coins at six facilities–Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, West Point, and Manila–for 43 different nations: Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Belgian Congo, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, French Indo-China, Greenland, Guatemala, Kingdom of Hawaii, Honduras, Israel, Liberia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands East Indies, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Surinam, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, and Venezuela.

While all designs, specifications, and compositions were dictated by the contracting government, the United States would usually engrave the dies. However, there are some cases where the customer would give the dies to the Mint or contract with a third-party company to manufacture the dies. For example, in 1897 the Dominican Republic contracted the Paris Mint to engrave its 1 Peso dies, which were subsequently sent to the Philadelphia Mint for use. These coins actually bear the Paris Mint Mark A.

Dominican Republic
Like the Costa Rican Colones, the design of all the denominations struck at the Philadelphia Mint for the Dominican Republic are the same. The obverse designs depict a left-facing bust of Lady Liberty wearing a stylized native headdress; the headband is engraved with the legend LIBERTAD. The denomination is placed against the denticled border to the left and the date to the right of the bust. The reverse is the Dominican Republic's shielded Coat of Arms. The country's name REPUBLICA DOMINICANA encircles the rim at the top of the coin, and the weight 5 GRAMOS at the bottom. The A mintmark for the Paris Mint is above the A in GRAMOS

 

To read the complete article, see:
Foreign Coins Struck by the United States Mint in the 19th Century (https://coinweek.com/world-coins/foreign-coins-struck-by-the-united-states-mint-in-the-19th-century/)

The 3ft 4in (1m) high bronze titled Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln) is by the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) and is a smaller version of a commission of 1883 for a monumental statue of the president for Chicago's Lincoln Park.

Skinner's bronze, which was cast before 1926, is one of a series of reductions cast from the original maquette made by Saint-Gaudens that were overseen by the sculptor's widow and begun in 1912.

It is signed and inscribed COPYRIGHT 1912 BY A.H.SAINT-GAUDENS on the back edge of the base, and AVGVSTVS SAINT GAVDENS SCVLPTOR M.D.CCC.LXXXVII along the left edge, and inscribed E PLVRIBVS VNVM on the chair. It had a provenance to a Massachusetts educational institution, probably since the 1930s, possibly earlier.

It made $950,000 (£698,530), just over the upper end of its $700,000-900,000 estimate, and was sold to the Colby College Museum of Art, in Maine where it will now go on public display in the Lunder Collection.

To read the complete article, see:
Abraham Lincoln bronze scaled down but makes a big price (https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/print-edition/2022/february/2530/international/abraham-lincoln-bronze-scaled-down-but-makes-a-big-price/)

New study shows that the brain is able to detect counterfeit money immediately, but it doesn't always act the information...

To read the complete article, see:
Trust your gut: Most people can spot a fake bank note in under a second (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/19/trust-gut-people-can-spot-fake-bank-note-second/)

The Stamp Act was quickly repealed, even before it could be enacted in America. By now, all the tax collectors had resigned, for fear of ending up in Boston Harbor wearing whatever you would wear instead of concrete boots in 1766.

But Americans were seriously ticked off at having their loyalty called into question. Parliament was ticked off at the Americans' refusal to contribute to their defense. And things gradually slid downhill, until . . .

Lord Cornwallis surrendered the American colonies to George Washington, to the theme tune of The World Turned Upside Down , played by the massed British Army bands (yes, that happened) after losing the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. British America hadn't really ended, of course: The colonies in the West Indies (enslaved people growing sugar) were far more profitable than the podunk operations on the mainland. But the mainland was now on its way to being what the Brits think America is for these days. She says cryptically.

Here's the design for the never-were stamps for British America:

To read the complete article, see:
The Stamp Tax That's Still With Us (https://annettelaing.substack.com/p/the-stamp-tax-thats-still-with-us)

 

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