Imprinted Dime?

My avatar is a counterstamped coin. The issuer, Lemuel Pomeroy, was a gunsmith in the early 1800's, and the marks match those on the firearms he made in 1826. He worked in Pittsfield, Mass. A half dozen coins or so, having his marks, are recorded in reference books. These coins may have been stamped to confirm the marks on his guns.

One of the more unusual reasons for stamping coins was to mark them in case of theft. This was done by some early collectors or those who simply hid their coins. Take my avatar coin for example. Were it to be stolen, it would be quite traceable should it enter the collector marketplace. Having a few, virtually unique coins in one's collection nowadays certainly can't hurt.

That's a temptation I would avoid if I were you. Americans are legally allowed to abuse their coins in a surprising number of ways, but placing advertisements on them and putting them back in circulation is one of the few ways that are prohibited. 18 USC section 475. I wouldn't want a bored federal agent to find one of your coins and decide to give you a rather unpleasant phone call.

I do not know how the Treasury would treat coins counterstamped for advertising purposes but they did throw a fit a few years ago in a similar scenario. In 2005, 20th Century Fox, along with the Franklin Mint, released 40,000 California quarters with a sticker application that advertised the premiere of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The promotion ended when Franklin Mint was issued a Cease and Desist order.

lets try it

Are we to now believe that all all those counterstamped coins, love tokens, hobo nickels, coin jewelery items, sticker dollars, etc., etc., are illegal? I seriously doubt it. The law was clearly intended to address counterfeiting and not to inhibit freedom of speech.

Yes they are. In fact back when the wheresgeorge website started up they sold a rubber stamp so you could stamp your notes. The government stepped in and told them to stop selling the stamp or face charges. They stopped selling the stamp.

Now if you get your own stamp made or you write it on the note it is still illegal but they are not likely to be able to find you, and the wheresgeorge people are off the hook because they didn't do it and they didn't sell you the stamp so you could do it.



The law was intended to keep the national coins and paper money from providing a free bulletin board. It also is easier to make sure the items are not counterfeit if they aren't covered with writing, advertisements or beaten up with counterstamps. It also keeps the government from having to replace these defaced pieces.

And the laws dealing with currency are much stricter than those dealing with coins as a rule. You can beat up, mutilate and deface your coins all you want (as long as you don't put an ad on them) and as long as it isn't done with fraudulent intent, you're fine.

But if you do anything to a paper note that would render it unfit to be reissued, then you have committed a crime and may be fined. No fraudulent intent is needed.

They should read what the actual law says because it has nothing in it limiting it to acts done with intent to defraud. It makes the act itself, if done with the intent to make the note unfit for reissue, illegal. Not a word in there about fraudulent intent.


Title 18 Chapter 17 Sec 333. Mutilation of national bank obligations

Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.