1652 New England 3 Pence?

I don't want to get this topic locked, and in no way am I trying to become hostile towards you, but you are becoming an issue here. It is 100% okay to have an opinion about this coin, every one of the thousands of viewers of this thread has their own. But you keep treating your opinion as the truth. That is not okay, you don't have the expertise, no matter what you say, to prove or disprove this coins validity, so stop pretending that you do. You have 2 options, WDWHH, either stop forcing your opinion on us and engage in constructive conversations, or, you can pick up your bags and leave. I do not care what you choose to do, but you CANNOT stay here and act like you are the only professional.

Apologies for my bluntness CCF.

-TCD

I know WDWHH may have created some problems here amongst everyone in this thread, but I feel that he is making a great point to be critical about this piece. A commonly talked about issue on this forum is authenticity of our coins, and many collectors on here are often keen to stress that it is ok to BE CRITICAL of a coin when something doesn't seem right, feels off, or when we plainly just don't know. The coin this topic is about is probably one of the rarest, most historically significant pieces of American coinage known. Heck, this coin is borderline mythical and no doubt legendary. This is why it's important that we do be critical of this piece in my opinion until it is announced that this coin is authentic. Many of us here are very hopeful that this coin turns out to be real. To be alive and to have witnessed the discovery of this piece is one of the highlights of the coincommunity forum's history.

That being said, we don't know for certain now if this coin is actually real. Judging by the hype, I feel this coin could reach some pretty high $$$ in an auction if verified. The fact that this coin could be worth so much gives all the reasons to counterfeiters to really try and make this coin as authentic-looking as possible. With all the modern technology that exists today, as well as knowledge of how coins were made in the past and how numismatists examine coins today, I'm sure that many smart, professional counterfeiters in a laboratory could create a piece that could be the perfect imitation of the real thing. I'm not talking about garage, back alley counterfeiters from China, but professional con-men who have the materials and the knowledge necessary to create these super-fakes.

I know I'm preaching in hypotheticals, but given how advanced technology has become today, I feel we need to be extra extra vigilant and careful that discoveries of coins as rare and significant as the 1652 New England 3 pence are fully verified to the greatest extent before we can conclude as a community that pieces are indeed authentic and worthy of our attention, study, and respect. It's ok if some people are beyond overly critical of something that really seems to good to be true. They keep everyone else in check and remind us that conclusions have not yet been set in stone.

Why? It is in the correct place.

So true!

I don't want to stir anything up, but I did the work so figured might as well post rather than sit on it. I put the NL and MHS threepences (top row) together with four sixpence that have decent images. I noticed a couple things - a "dot" in the upper left of N on the NL coin that also appears on four others, and a "chip" in the notch of N that appears on a sixpence and possibly the MHS example. Certainly you can observe a lot of other things like punch states, cartouche shape, etc.

Yes, there are a lot of dots all over these coins so it could be nothing but coincidence.



It's interesting that a similar looking feature is found in the upper left of the VI reverse.



Zooms of the N notches. Top row two different images of sixpence #5, middle row two images of NL threepence, bottom is the MHS threepence. It intrigues me how the sixpence and NL both appear as a vertical pair of dots in the right-hand images.



Zooms of the "dot" in the upper left N. Top and bottom left are the NL coin, top middle is MHS, the rest are sixpence. You can see how the appearance of this feature on the NL coin changes with angle and lighting. It's interesting that three of them have the appearance of a pair of dots.



Anyway, I'm just observing. In hand these things probably look a lot different. Hopefully at some point we'll see the Stacks images.

More likely just die damage. At any rate, it seems promising that they appear on larsjan's example.

Borrrowed this quote from Parkland from another discussion:"Welcome to CCF, Where you'll hear the truth no matter how unappealing!"

Unless, that is, you don't want to hear it

I am sorry people are being so rude larsjan.