Feuchtwanger Cent

I have no idea how to grade these, but it sure looks cleaned.

No idea about these, but that is one AWESOME coins!

supgog, Cleaned is what I immediately thought too seeing this coin. But I actually think this coin is made from a not so standard composition of metals that produce that slightly hazy cleaned coin look. I could be way off though.

"German silver." It's a cupronickel alloy which was far cheaper than the pure copper normally used for Cents. Lewis Feuchtwanger created them as a proposed solution to the coin-hoarding promoted by the Panic of 1837. That was a hard economic downturn caused (in part) by Andrew Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States (which was the nation's central bank) in 1932, leading to less-solid banks taking up the financial slack. The Federal Government as a result spread reserves around - to Western banks as well - by way of the Deposit and Distribution Act of 1836, leading to lesser deposits in Eastern banks against which they could loan. The other major factor was Great Britain's lack of hard-metal liquidity during the mid-1830's, against which they raised interest rates (money flows towards the greatest return) and as the world's financial power, when Britain raised interest rates, the rest of the world followed. That meant New York had to, compounding the problem caused by lesser deposits.

A recession resulted, during which people naturally hoarded hard coinage. Feuchtwanger's proposed coinage was substantially cheaper to produce; even though Congress didn't buy it, private coinage was not yet illegal in the US (not until 1857) and indeed a fair percentage of circulating coinage in the US at that time was either privately-produced copper tokens or foreign silver coins. So, Feuchtwanger produced his coins anyway, and here we are with Sunnyd23's wonderful example of his ambition.