Don in SJ
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Clipped Planchet King George III Halfpence-Updated -a Date and Very Rare
Monday morning I went back to the sawmill site area where I got the beautiful 1796 Liberty Cap Large Cent on April 30th. http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,85882.0.html
After an hour of digging nothing but shotgun casings, I finally got the high sweet tone and crosshair in upper right on the Explorer and a depth of about 8 inches, so I was fairly certain it was going to be another copper. It was.
I was surprised at first that it was a coin, I thought upon first glance that it was a broken tombac button, which break in unusual ways, but no, I could see part of REX so I new it was a British copper. More on the copper later in this post.
After finding the coin, nearby I got the first of two early 1800's flat buttons, one with no backmark and one with what I believe is gilt or colour, the button is too far gone to tell for sure, but they both fit in with the dozen I have found at this site.
I started exploring a bit for about an hour, went maybe two or three blocks back into the woods towards some fields that my son and I looked at this winter but the ground was frozen. Clam shell fragments were scattered throughout the fields but not from a homestead being there, more likely being used as an additive to the soil, like nowadays farmers add lime in this region. I will hit the fields another day, although I know they have been pounded by others.
As I exited the one field I was near a small cellarhole we found a few months ago and really got nothing there, except for one lonely Indianhead penny nearby. But I got a nice reading and out of the ground pops a nice little piece of silver. It is a broken solid silver buckle and if that were intact, that would have been my showpiece relic of the year. I can just imagine how that buckle looked prior to being broken. I will go back and search the area in hopes of finding the rest of it...
Overall, I was pleased with the hunt, the solid silver piece of buckle was very nice to find, since almost all I have are not silver and yes, some that are silver plated, but none that are solid silver. But, it is the King George III copper that really brings a smile to my face.
The copper is not a common one, well most are not here anyway, since Regal King George III coppers are in the minority for being found, since they were not as plentiful back than as were the counterfeits/imitations which flooded the colonies from manufacturers in England and then here in the colonies.
Now, what makes this counterfeit/imitation special to me is, besides being another nice counterfeit, it is a severely clipped planchet coin. In addition to it looks like several other strikes were made on the planchet on the Reverse side.
I submitted the coin's photo to the Counterfeit group of the Colonial Coin Collectors Club (C4) in hopes of them identifying it by family/group and even possibly giving a year.
I waited till this evening and the reply I got was not what I was hoping for. They could not come up with an attribution of this coin, at least not yet, so if I here of one I will add that to this post, but one of the experts thought it perhaps was similar to a 1784 rare variety counterfeit, of which I asked them to send me a photo to compare, and other than that, they were baffled.
However, one statement was nice: "it is very rare to see a clipped planchet of that magnitude on a circulated King George III counterfeit copper"....
Date, well, I guess for now I will log it as a standard, 1770-75 for the year, which means undated, but MS Excel requires for sorting purposes numbers LOL.......
The coin is 27mm in diameter and weighs 100.8 grains.
I will be going back to the site again either Thursday or Friday, summer will soon be here and time for the detector and detectorist to take a break.
For those who do not understand what a clipped planchet is, look at this link, although it is explaining under modern times, the result and terminology is basically the same. http://www.ngccoin.com/news/viewarticle.asp?IDArticle=312
Don in SJ
Monday morning I went back to the sawmill site area where I got the beautiful 1796 Liberty Cap Large Cent on April 30th. http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,85882.0.html
After an hour of digging nothing but shotgun casings, I finally got the high sweet tone and crosshair in upper right on the Explorer and a depth of about 8 inches, so I was fairly certain it was going to be another copper. It was.
I was surprised at first that it was a coin, I thought upon first glance that it was a broken tombac button, which break in unusual ways, but no, I could see part of REX so I new it was a British copper. More on the copper later in this post.
After finding the coin, nearby I got the first of two early 1800's flat buttons, one with no backmark and one with what I believe is gilt or colour, the button is too far gone to tell for sure, but they both fit in with the dozen I have found at this site.
I started exploring a bit for about an hour, went maybe two or three blocks back into the woods towards some fields that my son and I looked at this winter but the ground was frozen. Clam shell fragments were scattered throughout the fields but not from a homestead being there, more likely being used as an additive to the soil, like nowadays farmers add lime in this region. I will hit the fields another day, although I know they have been pounded by others.
As I exited the one field I was near a small cellarhole we found a few months ago and really got nothing there, except for one lonely Indianhead penny nearby. But I got a nice reading and out of the ground pops a nice little piece of silver. It is a broken solid silver buckle and if that were intact, that would have been my showpiece relic of the year. I can just imagine how that buckle looked prior to being broken. I will go back and search the area in hopes of finding the rest of it...
Overall, I was pleased with the hunt, the solid silver piece of buckle was very nice to find, since almost all I have are not silver and yes, some that are silver plated, but none that are solid silver. But, it is the King George III copper that really brings a smile to my face.
The copper is not a common one, well most are not here anyway, since Regal King George III coppers are in the minority for being found, since they were not as plentiful back than as were the counterfeits/imitations which flooded the colonies from manufacturers in England and then here in the colonies.
Now, what makes this counterfeit/imitation special to me is, besides being another nice counterfeit, it is a severely clipped planchet coin. In addition to it looks like several other strikes were made on the planchet on the Reverse side.
I submitted the coin's photo to the Counterfeit group of the Colonial Coin Collectors Club (C4) in hopes of them identifying it by family/group and even possibly giving a year.
I waited till this evening and the reply I got was not what I was hoping for. They could not come up with an attribution of this coin, at least not yet, so if I here of one I will add that to this post, but one of the experts thought it perhaps was similar to a 1784 rare variety counterfeit, of which I asked them to send me a photo to compare, and other than that, they were baffled.
However, one statement was nice: "it is very rare to see a clipped planchet of that magnitude on a circulated King George III counterfeit copper"....
Date, well, I guess for now I will log it as a standard, 1770-75 for the year, which means undated, but MS Excel requires for sorting purposes numbers LOL.......
The coin is 27mm in diameter and weighs 100.8 grains.
I will be going back to the site again either Thursday or Friday, summer will soon be here and time for the detector and detectorist to take a break.
For those who do not understand what a clipped planchet is, look at this link, although it is explaining under modern times, the result and terminology is basically the same. http://www.ngccoin.com/news/viewarticle.asp?IDArticle=312
Don in SJ
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