Stickers On A Steamer Trunk: American Merchant Countermarks On Foreign Coins

Just saw that many of the ANS Long table talks/presentations are now available on the ANS YouTube channel through their Annual Report Magazine. One of my very favorite numismatists is the speaker giving this fascinating talk.

John Kraljevich, ANS Fellow and researcher, takes a look into the pockets antebellum America. The diversity of the United States, and the global reach of its economy, was on full display in the tills of enterprising merchants from Boston to New Orleans to San Francisco. Some of the most enterprising of these merchants used circulating coinage as an advertising medium, offering modern scholars and collectors insight into what types of world coins circulated where. The marks these merchants left on coins range from simple to sublime, and collectors have avidly pursued them for generations.