BOOK REVIEW: NEW JERSEY STATE COPPERS COMPANION

REVIEW OF THE "NEW JERSEY STATE COPPERS Companion"
by Roger S. Siboni, John L. Howes and A. Buell Ish

I had the privilege of reading this outstanding book, pre-publication. The Companion supplements the original New Jersey State Coppers book, but owning the first book is not a requirement as it is valuable in its own right. The Companion makes two big contributions to collecting NJ state coppers: an in-depth study of NJ painted die varieties (PDVs) and a pictorial condition census of the private and auctioned great NJ coppers collections—never seen before in one book. This is the first pictorial census published by C4 and hopefully may lead to other future pictorial CCs in different colonial series. As part of its educational mission, this will be the fourteenth book published by C4.

The late Robert Martin was the leading expert on PDVs and he shared his knowledge with the authors. Through studies of pedigree chains, it is possible to determine who made the painted annotation. In some cases, however, it might be an educated guess or maybe speculation. For some NJ copper collectors, this is a new area with the chance of forming a related subsidiary NJ collection.

The question of what is a true condition census NJ copper can be answered by comparing a prospective coin versus the pictures, not just relying on the slab grade. The fact that these outstanding coins are documented in one place in 2024 is a gift to future generations of collectors.

Colonial coppers have their individuality—they are not uncirculated Morgan dollars. The pictorial CC will allow the astute NJ collector to make their own judgments.

I predict strong sales of the Companion for the hottest area of colonial collecting—NJ coppers.

 

In the past, collectors of colonial and pre-federal coinage would paint or otherwise hand write die variety attribution numbers on their coins. Evidence of the practice, considered taboo by collectors today, can be seen on many pre-federal coins. These are known as PDVs (Painted Die Varieties).

Ray Williams, former president of the Colonial Coin Collectors Club and an expert on Confederation-era state coinage, authored an article on PDVs for the March 2024 issue of The Numismatist that lays out the rationale for the painting. Collectors who stored coins in cabinets understood that if a tray from a cabinet was dropped and coins were separated from their identification tags, "All [their] attribution work would be for naught, and it would take possibly days or weeks to reattribute the coins." Thus, they chose to record the variety in a way that couldn't be separated from the coin!

Using ink, usually white or another light color (occasionally black ink or pencil was used), collectors hand-wrote variety attribution numbers on their coins. The practice came into vogue, per Williams, as the first serious efforts at cataloging pre-federal coinage by die variety were being published, from the mid-19th century to the early 20th

To read the complete article, see:
Did You Know That In the 19th Century Some Early American Copper Collectors Would Hand-Write Variety Attributions on Their Coins (https://stacksbowers.com/did-you-know-that-in-the-19th-century-some-early-american-copper-collectors-would-hand-write-variety-attributions-on-their-coins/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: NEW JERSEY STATE COPPERS COMPANION (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n36a04.html)

 

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