51 Days Of Flying Eagle And Indian Head Cents! - Part 4!!

AcesKings - Lovely proof (I assume), congrats.

great adds eveyone

Here's a counterstamped 1885 Indian cent. B.I. TISDEL, Bethuel I. Tisdel was born in 1838. He worked for the Ithaca Calendar Clock Company in central NY. Samuel, born in 1844, also worked as a clockmaker, between 1868-76. Samuel became a dealer in firearms, bicycles, sewing machines and sporting goods in Ithaca. (ancestry records)

I bought the 1885 cent because of the uncommon surname and combination of initials; this, hoping I might someday attribute the counterstamp. The key to my pegging Bethuel as the issuer was the S.R. TISDEL counterstamp on the reverse. I guessed that these might be a brother's initials. Sure enough, research proved that Bethuel had a brother, Samuel R. Tisdel. They were originally from Wayne Co., PA. Bethuel died in 1906. Samuel remained in business for years thereafter.




As luck would have it, I also managed to snag a second specimen of the Tisdel counterstamp on an 1864 cent. Not many clockmakers, it seems, stamped coins. I suspect that these were personal pieces once carried by the brothers as masonic ID's, perhaps. This was a fairly common practice back in the 1800's.



To my knowledge, these are the only two specimens recorded. The tiny letters suggest that the brothers did fine work.

1866 Type I & II cents

1880 Indian Head cent

1887 IHC


1888 IHC

1889 IHC

1890 IHC