1859 Penny Information Request

Thanks for all the info. I appreciate all the time taken to help me "get up to speed", on these pennies.

arthur

A dear friend, one of the top experts in large cents asked to have the message below posted here, since he is not allowed to do it.

--


All the Canadian Provincial coinages were struck in London and used Brit suppliers for the planchets/smelting.... Canada was not a country at the time, just a Brit outpost. At that time (early to mid 19th century), Great Britain already had copper coinages in penny, half penny and farthing denominations ... each with static, unchanging dimensions/specs. Prior to 1800, the size/dimensions of the coinages depended upon the price of the base metal being used ... a penny had 1 penny worth of copper and dimensions changed periodically to compensate for the costs. That all ended with the 1797 'cartwheel' series that were HUGE in size and soon were worth more as to the copper content than their face value as the price of copper rose. In the 19th century, the British half penny was copper, exactly 1 inch (25.4mm) in diameter and weighed 5.5 - 5.8 grams.

Canada tried for years to get "official" coins minted by the mother country, but had to use foreign coinage and private or bank tokens for commerce and trade. Canada wanted their one cent coinage to be exactly 1" in diameter and be exactly 100 to the pound (4.54g). With 2 coins the same diameter (Brit halfpenny and Canada Cent), but differing in weight and alloy (Brit copper vs Canadian bronze), the only dimension that could be changed was the thickness of the planchet. As such, the one gram+ lighter Canadian penny was 1/4 to 1/3 thinner than the Brit halfpenny and people/consumers did not like them, feeling 'cheated' by thinner lighter coins. During the next minting of Canadian cents (1876) they returned to making the Canadian Cent the same dimensions as the Brit halfpenny and all was right with the world.

The main reason that there are so many varieties of the 1858 and '59 Cents is due to this planchet thickness reduction. The London presses were set for thicker planchets and pure copper alloy. The thinner Canadian bronze planchets were harder and provided much less buffering between the opposing/clashing working dies. The working dies were self-destructing at an alarming rate, especially the heavily detailed reverse dies, so that many more working dies needed to be manufactured than anticipated. The more dies made, the more varieties created, as the working dies were reworked/massaged during manufacture. It's impossible to find an 1859 without a die crack somewhere or some letters/digits slightly "repunched" ... they are not really repunched, but rather the 2-4 strikes required to make a complete working die from the hub didn't all hit in EXACTLY the same place. The Canadian order for 10 million coins did not come without many many dies being made and much machinery/equipment failure.

I can not recommend strongly enough that any Canadian large cent collector MUST read Rob Turner's first reference 'bible' ... "The 1858 Cents of Provincial Canada". The first half of the book gives all the history, of not just the 1858 Cent, but the background for ALL the early Canadian coinage. Rob's detailed recap of how we got actual Canadian coinage can be found nowhere else and is needed to try to understand how the coin in our hand came to be the way it is now.

--

BILL BILL BILL

[/center]

(/me loves playing with smilies ...)
(edited: one smilie came out wrong)

I can't recommend this site enough: http://www.vickycents.com/index.html

FYI terminology... the 1859 coin is a CENT (1/100 of a decimal Dollar). There are also pennies and half-pennies of the time (1850-1857) based on the British pound, see http://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coi...in_coin=8698. I also recommend http://www.bankofcanada.ca/publicat...dian-dollar/

And if you keep reading about Canada pre-dominion coinage, you'll soon find that Upper Canada was SOUTH and WEST of Lower Canada. Which makes sense if you think in St Laurence terms (like the upper and lower Mississippi in them thar southern untied states...

We don't... despite Bill being a great guy and extremely knowledgeable about Canadian large cents, he is like an old dog with a bone when it comes to a certain Canadian coin book by Brookstone Publishing - which goes back well into the old CCRS days... Bill was banned over this previously, and the moderators of this site did me a personal favour last year by allowing him back...

But poor Bill could not leave that old bone alone... and was banished again. Although I cannot speak for the administrator(s) here, if I was a betting man, my money is on him never being allowed back.

Be grateful that Bill cares enough to still come and read the threads, and pass his messages on to his friends to keep the novice large cent collectors from straying wayward or being suckered into buying something that is not what is hyped to be...

the soldier is not lost - he just fights remotely :-)

Bill is a great guy, who patiently thought me 98% of what I know. He is just like a grand-father who prefers to shake a heavy stick when he sees one of the kids threatened.

once we are on the subject, some of us have an on-going bet on when a certain 5c collector will join Bill in the limbo ... (I have February)

I know rules are rules (and I dont know all the details), but such a waste to have so much knowledge (bill) "unavailable" to the masses. he seemed to be willing to share what he knew regardless of how trivial the question or how many times it had been asked before.

I feel dumber with him not being here.

Unless it's one of the very rare die marriage varieties (which would be in the description to talk up the value), that seems crazy. I spent US$18 including shipping for mine.

Yes, the bidding pattern seems both odd and - if it's shilling - very labor intensive. But it might have driven the price from $43 to $177... Not to mention he's not very efficient - after all if it's a shill, he's won 52 auctions from the seller meaning fees paid to ebay...

You can report the apparent shilling to ebay. That buyer and seller set/received an absurd price, is just caveat emptor.

Although I am going to trot off and tell she-who-must-be-obeyed that my purchase is now worth $150 more than I paid for it. If you see it listed, means she wants me to sell it to take her out for a nice dinner. Of course when it DOES sell for what it's worth, we're at Chez Ronald for the value menu...