As indicated above, the coin is indeed a Contemporary Circulating Counterfeit which I catalogued in my book. It is the GNL 1812 A / MoTH-001. There were at the time of publication (end of 2013) about 6 examples noted in my files. Since that time several others have been located. It is therefore a coin I now consider to be only scarce. All but the earliest strikes have a die chip near the upper left terminus of the 2 in the date. Over time as the dies aged many other similar defects developed.
This is a comparatively late die state example and the first noted to be significantly off center.
"Wrong King" counterfeits of Charles IV are very popular and it may be that it was purchased as a CCC. Riddell established a section in his book devoted to coins with the wrong king so this feature was of interest even in 1845.
These coins were struck manually in a screw press that had NO centering collar. The planchet was placed on the lower die (anvil die) by a human being. The strike force was created by a spin of a heavy counterweight on both ends of a steel bar several feet long. Now if I was doing the job of positioning the planchet, I would be very concerned that my fingers were not in the way when the dies came together. I might not be as concerned with on center positioning.
However, off center strikes are comparatively scarce in genuine coins of this series. Why is a difficult question to answer for a person of this day and age. You need to adopt the mindset of the time, a time of Kings. The King's money (that is what these coins are) meant that workmen had to get them right. Defective examples were melted. More that just a finger depended on getting it right. Seriously off center coins would have been melted (to avoid an insult to the monarch). In addition, the workmen were paid by total output of coins. So speed and precision were BOTH required. I expect that the fingers of the workman who sat before the press were the most expendable commodity.
Counterfeit coins on the other hand are often struck off center. They are also found struck twice and dies were overused (until deterioration made the coins look bad).
So as a general warning - look very closely at coins that have minting errors. They are often counterfeits.
Posted 01/09/2017 8:55 pm
