Massachusetts Oak Tree Shilling For Your Grading Consideration

Wow that is one nice coin. Unfortunately I'll probably never own one, unless I hit the lottery ( which considering I don't play would be hard to do)

The coin is in fantastic. AU55

AU58

I will venture at AU-50. I love the interesting coins you post. I have never had one of these in my hands, and probably never will but it is nice to look at here.

PCGS graded this Oak Tree Shilling EF-45.

This coin is bent, and the vast majority of the Massachusetts silver pieces from the Willow Tree to the large planchet Pine Tree coins are also bent. Why?

The old wives' tales is that they are "witches' pieces." The story was that people bent these coins to ward off evil spirits. While this may have been done now and then, the real reason why these coins are bend it due to their method of manufacture.

These coins were struck on a device called a rocker press. Instead of going up and down, like a conventional coin press, this device rocked over planchet like an old fashioned hand printer like my father used to use. The dies have an oblong shape which gives the coins a kind of stretched out look. Quite often this device is out of alignment which results in consistent off-center strikes. Some varieties are almost always seen with one side or the other off-center.



A set of rocker press dies.



What was the advantage to this? The rocker press allowed the operator to make the coins with less pressure. The coin was stuck bit by bit as it were instead of all at once as it is with a hammer, drop press or a screw press.

The last Pine Tree shillings, the small planchet pieces, were struck on what was probably a screw press. This was the same technology that was used at the first U.S. mint staring in 1793.