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Need Help With A 1714 Queen Anne Farthing

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 Posted 04/18/2025  11:24 pm Show Profile   Bookmark this topic Add jdsstrat to your friends list Get a Link to this Message Number of Subscribers
Recently I posted about Queen Anne Farthings. I had been doing some reading about them but still had unanswered questions. Particularly this: everyone seems to agree that the farthings released for circulation were made from copper and yet the two people who have dived deeper into these coins than most beg to differ. Or so it seems. For example, C. Wilson Peck writes that others were released (perhaps those that failed Sir Isaac Newton's purity test?). And then there was Colin Cooke, who had a collection that includes Queen Anne farthings that had cracked when struck during testing and others made of tin and lead. So what gives? My farthing below is from dies 2 and E. It is on a small, thick (i.e., about 2 mm) flan, with a diameter of about 22 mm and a weight of about 5.07g. The edge is not only cracked, as you can see, but it is plain, which to most people who know about these farthings would suggest that this is another copper farthing. But it's not copper (and I asked two people at a recent coin show near me who concurred). I'm not sure what it is, though: it's too heavy for tin, too light for silver. And I wouldn't think it was lead for the same reason, although it looks to me like lead. That said, C. Wilson Peck also wrote that there were "rather deceptive small flan silver casts" out there but I can find no evidence of a seam on this one. And then there's the weight. This farthing is clearly a circulated example, but it's more its composition that I am wondering about than its grade. What do you all think?



Edited by jdsstrat
04/19/2025 12:07 am
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Hondo Boguss's Avatar
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 Posted 04/19/2025  01:34 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Hondo Boguss to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
The edge is not only cracked

Could this possibly be a sprue mark?
As for composition, an XRF reading would solve that mystery rather quickly.
Inordinately fascinated by bits of metal with strange markings and figures
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MisterT's Avatar
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 Posted 04/19/2025  05:59 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add MisterT to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
The mushy details and the bubbles in the fields would suggest to me that it is a cast.
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 Posted 04/19/2025  06:57 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add jdsstrat to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
Could this possibly be a sprue mark


I thought that too but couldn't square it with Peck's "rather deceptive" comment.


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PaddyB's Avatar
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944 Posts
 Posted 04/19/2025  07:05 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add PaddyB to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
It certainly looks to me like one of the contemporary cast copies, the same as mine, posted on the other thread.
The sprue suggests they were cast in multiples and broken apart.
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 Posted 04/19/2025  09:11 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add jdsstrat to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
the same as mine


In some ways, Paddy, yes, it looks like yours. But in others, like the color, it doesn't, which brings me back to an XRS reading, as Hondo suggested.
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 Posted 04/22/2025  10:08 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add jdsstrat to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
That's XRF reading, sorry for the typo.
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