Holed Early Coins

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Originally posted by Becky

Don't you just love the square holes? Most of the coins look like they were punched instead of drilled.

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Becky, have you stopped to think about those holes and that they more than likely were punched. In those days they used square nails and it sure seems likely that they would have used one of these to make the hole.

Yes Thingee, I am learning a good bit myself about an area that, heretofore, I thought of as ruined coins. I didn't realize I would learn so much when I started it, but I'm sure glad I did. And, hopefully there will be more to come.

longnine009 - you asked about the position of the hole in the 1838 Zs OM counterfeit 8R "Was the hole a way of getting rid of a mistake?"

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...110027833731

Actually I was trying to point out the fact that the position of the hole is such that the coin would not hang upright when suspended from a string or chain. The normal position for a jewelry mount is top dead center but a cancellation hole is more like the one shown on this coin.

I won another tonight that has a hole through the date - which is another typical location for a cancellation. This positioning can be confused with a jewelry mount whenever the coin uses the "coin rotation" as opposed to a medalic die positioning axis.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...270025339933

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Originally posted by Ralph

This caused me to go back and look at my holed coins - the 1848 large cent has the hole drilled where the 1 should be in the date. Counterfeit? That brings up another question - why would someone counterfeit a one cent coin, if it were, indeed, a counterfeit? This is interesting.

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one cent used to actually buy things...

Ralph - You ask That brings up another question - why would someone counterfeit a one cent coin, if it were, indeed, a counterfeit? This is interesting. There are counterfeits of all denominations of US coins - either made at the time of the originals or since. A rather common forgery seen in Boston was an 1893 US Indian Head cent that was made in the mid-1890s. There were so many that the Secret Service got involved and there were several articles in the local papers. Some of these articles have been reprinted in standard books on counterfeiting as period sources.


longnine009 - the hole was drilled by any number of different people from quasi-official (bankers) to merchants (who had gotten ripped off) to coin dealers (who did it well into the 20th century). The drill hole was meant simply to identify a coin as a forgery. It could be placed anywhere. I know of collectors who specialize in varieties based on the location of the holes. The hole stopped the coin from circulating freely. US Counterfeits have always been illegal to spend even when identified and the same applied to foreign coins until they were demonetized in 1857.

The hole would never be made by the forger - with one exception - a modern copy of an old counterfeit. Because old counterfeits are now valuable there is a growing business of forging counterfeits. In that case, you might see a forger add a drill hole for believability, but that would be a counterfeit made in the past few years only.

You also mentioned counterfeits being underweight. Not all counterfeits are underweight. Some are too heavy and some are exactly the correct weight with the correct assay of silver. The hole was to stop a coin from passing at face value. One fact you may not be aware of is that because silver values fluctuated there were many years when a dollar contained far less than a dollar's worth of silver. At the low point it contained about 23 cents worth so in the 1890s a very lucrative forgery business developed making full weight silver counterfeits. The forgers made a 4 fold return on their investment in silver if the got a dollar to pass at face value. The recently "discovered" micro O Morgan dollars are examples of this kind of forgery as are numerous Portrait 8R coins made in the 1890s to be spent in China.

Man SwamperBob I just love your posts, I learn sooo much every time I read one

SwamperBob - you are a wealth of knowledge.