I didn't manage to get this in before the sale, but Bob Merchant recently offered an interesting counterstamped Indian Head cent. Here's the lot description. -Editor

That last year might be "1896".

I reached out to Steve Bishop who knows a lot about patent records, and he wrote. "There are hundreds, if not thousands of patents issued on those dates. Without any further information about the issuer, it's impossible to know which patents are being referred to."

I didn't think the numbers would be that high, but it could be a doable challenge for a researcher with some software skills. What are the odds of there being a single inventor with issued patents on two random dates? Not impossible by any means, but I would imagine pretty low. A cross-search of any two of these dates would likely zero in on the common issuer. And once a name (or names) has been identified, it would be easy to confirm with a simple lookup on the remaining dates. -Editor