Latest Add To My Odd Collection

William D. Smith born 1800 in New York. He died after 1860. He lived and worked in both Newark, New Jersey, and New York City. He produced line engravings for printed reproductions. The 1860 city directory for New York shows his business address as 1 Ann Street.

It is believed that William is the man referred to as "Smith of Ann Street" mentioned by William Woodward in several catalogs. If so, he produced engraved copies of 1793 cents. Woodward also suspected that Smith was the producer of some quality electrotypes of 1793 cents.

Smith took well-worn cents and extensively engraved the remaining surface, rounding Liberty's cheeks and giving definition to her hair strands. The result — lightweight by necessity — is nowhere near original looking but has a not-unattractive, otherworldly presence that attracts collectors.

His manufacture of the 1793 cents was not meant to fool anyone, but rather to make a nearly worthless cent (like a low-grade and granular Wreath cent, worth just pennies in the 1850s and 1860s) into something admirable and perhaps suitable as a hole-filler in the place of the elusive high-grade cents of 1793.

William D Smith was also an artiest below is his work "Street Views no. 1--Park Row" engraving, 6 3#8260;8 x 9 inch, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Looks like the obverse was faked by a counterfeiter and the reverse was faked by his brother.