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Vol. 9, No. 5 May, 2010
"Old Security Protectors for Currency" "Early Rimming Machine (Illus.)"
Above: Not all "Ships, Colonies & Commerce"-type tokens were for Canada . Shown (ca 1 ½ x) is a storecard of James Cole, grocer at South Wolfe St. , Baltimore , Maryland in 1835-6. This particular "Ship" obverse, incidentally, is that of the " Baltimore Token", a general issue. The Mid-Island Coin Club, Dues: $12 per year Mailing Address: Mid-Island Coin Club, c/o West Coast Stamp & Coin, Executive Officers: President: Felix Stawski
The meeting of April 8 was attended by a total of 39 members and guests, which would seem to be our biggest ever. In addition to our scheduled speaker, Phil Harris, who delivered an illustrated talk on polymer notes, Russ McMullen also gave a short talk on the various varieties of recent small cents. Orest also mentioned some satirical U.S. notes. It was a crowded room, lots of hubbub at the start. Which was great. Not quite so great was a couple of problems that sprang up at the end. First of all, someone forgot to pay for their meal and when this happens, the club has to come good. For whoever did not, see Joan; all is forgiven. The May meeting will have thematic infotainment: animals on coins, notes and tokens. Bring an example and be prepared to say a few words on it. Been a while since we've had whole-room participation.
What's in a name? Back in 1202, Venice started to issue a large (2.2 gram, 21mm) silver coin called a "grosso", simply meaning "big". It was such a convenient size that the French followed in 1266 with their own "gros tournois" and the Germans at the same time with their own "groschen". England followed in 1279/80 during a coinage reform of Edward I with a "groat", valued at four silver pence. For nearly 200 years, these were the "big" coins of Europe , finally displaced in the late 1400s with the "thaler"/ "daalder"/ "crown" and their halves. But the "grossos" and its descendants served one purpose: allowing room to have a design more ornate than the "denaros", "pfennigs" and "pennies" that had gone before.
Old Security Protectors for Currency.
When Marco Polo returned from the court of Kublai Khan in the 1300s with reports of the immense wealth generated in large part by the paper currency there, he was called a liar in his native Italy . But he was right. Even so, it was only a few decades later that the danger of paper money manifested in China (unknown to Polo) in the form of inflation and the equivalent of a "crash". To this day, some of these old Chinese "broken notes" are still available to collectors after 600 years and more.
Not that paper financial "instruments" were unknown in Europe . There were goldsmith's note-of-hand, bills of exchange and the like. But the first real paper money in Europe was issued by the "Stockholms Banco" of Sweden in 1661. Unfortunately, the earliest notes - all extremely rare - are all in institutions with illustrations unavailable. These first notes were partly printed and partly written out by hand. Shown below is one of the earlier notes, a 10-Daler "Silvermynt" issue of 1666.
The larcenous must have been thrilled by the notion that an intrinsically worthless piece of paper might, by the correct designs, signatures and seals, represent a pile of silver or gold - of great intrinsic worth. The issuers or authorities (frequently one and the same) were just as determined that their paper notes could not be copied unlawfully: counterfeited. The above shows some of the earliest anti-counterfeiting devices. First of all, the fact it is printed was in itself something of a protection, particularly if the typeface and border decorations were unique to the original printer. Then it was signed no fewer than eight times, each signatory applying his own seal by impressing it in the paper. This was topped off with yet another "general" seal, also impressed into the paper. For its time, this was something of cutting-edge anti-counterfeiting technology.
Here we skip ahead some 150 years, only because the devices used had been employed for a long time. This is a Ten Dollar "Army Issue" from Canada , the Quebec issue of January, 1815 (and the last of the series). Since the danger from counterfeiting was likely to be the recent enemy, the Americans, who were no slouches as printers themselves, the devices are three: (a) the floral spray at upper left which would have to be copied exactly; (b) the column of printing on what was called the "counterfoil", inverted, each line reading alternately "Exchange" and "Dix Piastres" - with no two lines in the same typeface or size (the counterfeiter would have to have 30 different sets of type, each of them accurate to the official note) and finally (c) the cut through the counterfoil. Such notes were issued in types of books, each note paid out by being hand-cut through the printing with a sharp blade so that no two notes would be alike in this respect. The particulars of the issued note would be noted on the retained stub and, upon presentation for payment, that serial note would be compared with the stub, presumably found to match the cut exactly, and the note redeemed. Otherwise it was a fake. And counterfeiting meant the rope - an anti-counterfeiting "device" in itself. Such devices, especially the unique-to-each-note cut through the counterfoil, were highly effective in ensuring that the issuer was not stuck with a fake upon redemption. But for the notes circulating from hand to hand, it was no insurance against fakery at all. For this reason, various attempts were made to protect the users of notes, as well as their issuers, against counterfeits. After all, counterfeiting could discourage the public against using even the legitimate notes, to the loss of profit to the issuer.
The above note is a £3 issue of New Jersey of 25 March, 1776 , while the state was still one of Britain 's Thirteen Colonies. It has a number of anti-counterfeiting devices intended to protect the public, trusting them to be equally effective with the more certain, but also more time-consuming, counterfoil cut. A very busy note, a counterfeiter would have to spend considerable time in duplicating the design on a plate. And, although it does not show up here in black and white, the note required more than one pass through the press since it is also printed in bright red and blue as well as the predominant black. Finally, it has a "nature print" on the back, an anti-counterfeiting device in which Benjamin Franklin reputedly had a hand. The print on the plate was taken from an actual leaf by an acid-bath process which ate into the copper plate more deeply where parts of the leaf did not protect it. The result was a sort of negative picture with a great deal of immensely subtle shadings and tones, held to be almost impossible to engrave by hand. This device was in vogue through much of the 1760s and '70s in states such as Delaware and New Jersey . Note also the very un-subtle " 'Tis Death to counterfeit ". "Perkins Stereotype Steel Plate".
Top: Passamaquoddy Bank, Eastport , Maine . $5, Dec. 1, 1824 . Btm.: Closeup of center.
Gloucester Bank, Gloucester , Mass. $5, July 1, 1814 .
One of the more effective and long-lasting anti-counterfeiting devices was the invention of Jacob Perkins (1766 - 1849) of Newburyport , Massachusetts . This was a very talented man, at 21 engraving the dies for the Massachusetts cents and half-cents, dated 1787. He was also an inventor in a number of fields but in the 1790s, he came up with the anti-counterfeiting invention that became known as "Perkins Stereotype Steel Plate" process. To date, banknotes were usually printed from copper plates which, although easy to engrave, had a limited life of not more than 5000 copies before wear started to fuzz the design. For issues within this limit, there was no problem but for larger ones, the engraver could only take the easiest path and engrave a duplicate plate which, being by hand, could be expected to have a number of small differences. On the street, one who was expected to receive, say, two $10 notes, supposedly identical - but who could detect some small differences - could also be expected to decline them both, at least one note suspected of being a counterfeit. Everyone knew the answer: steel plates which would reproduce indefinitely. But they were difficult to engrave, even when softened by annealing, and at the end of the run would have to be destroyed - usually in the presence of the customer. Perkins' brainstorm was to produce steel background plates, each of which was slotted to receive slugs on which were quickly engraved the particulars. Note that on the Eastport note the background reads Five Dollars over and over again; it was the same for each denomination. A counterfeiter would go mad attempting to reproduce these tiny words over and over - but Perkins had to do it only once, the same plate able to print the same denomination note for numerous banks. Produced about 12 years apart, we should note that the only real differences between the two notes shown above are: the arms of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the left versus MAINE , the banks' names and their towns of location. The Eastport note is uniface, but not all such Perkins notes were. He also developed a specific back for notes as additional checks: they were A through D but any (say) B back could be compared to any other B back (from any bank, from any state, from any date) and be found identical if both were genuine. Perkins' invention was successful enough that the Massachusetts Banking Act of 1809 mandated the use of Perkins Plate notes for all future issues in the state in denominations up to $5 and the check back to appear on all $5. Most of Perkins' work was done for New England banks but there were also issues for Rhode Island and even Michigan . Millions of notes were turned out but Perkins was in the printing business, not that of credit-checking and some issues became little more than wallpaper-hanging operations, a couple of the more notorious being the Farmers Exchange Bank of Gloucester, Rhode Island and the Detroit Bank.
Top: Agriculture Bank, Brewer, Maine . $10, Jan. 1, 1841 . Bottom: "Check" back. This shows how little had changed in forty years or more.
Although Perkins Stereotype notes continued to be printed well into the 1850s, Perkins himself sold the business in 1832, the successor becoming the New England Bank Note Company, located in Boston . By the 1850s, photography was becoming a counterfeiting tool which nullified much of Perkins' invention; as well, customers were increasingly demanding less plain, more ornate notes.
The Colored Tints. In the hands of skilful criminals, the camera was proving to be an invaluable tool. No matter how well-designed and -engraved a note was (quality being the main defense against counterfeiting by such companies as the American Bank Note Company), the camera could overcome these defenses. Photographed actual size on a treated copper plate, the copier could simply engrave away the lines as they stood. The camera even co-operated by making the image reversed, precisely what was needed when the plate printed the note. Bank note companies reacted by adding colored "protectors" - the denomination spelled out or as a large figure - underprinted before the main black design was applied. This was to defeat the camera but counterfeiters fought back by photographing through colored glass filters which made the color in question disappear. This didn't work well for the color green for some reason but since no printing color at the time was really permanent, the colors could be removed by various chemicals (sometimes as simple as soapy water) and applied as a separate step.
City Bank, Montreal . $1. "Protected" issue of 1857. Overprinted for Quebec City branch.
The next breakthrough came in 1857 when the City Bank ( Montreal ) notes were being plagued with quite good counterfeits, produced with the use of the camera. On March 2 of that year, the bank's president penned a rather plaintive letter to the foremost authority of which he was aware: Dr. Thomas Sperry Hunt, professor of chemistry at Laval University and one of the acknowledged authorities on the commercial use of mineral products. Was it not possible, the president wrote, to concoct a colored printing ink (with preference for green), that was as impervious to removal from paper as black? Or at least removable only at the cost of destroying the paper? He was gratified to receive a reply to the effect of "Why, yes; quite possibly there is". In short order, Dr. Hunt produced a permanent green ink based on sesqui-oxide of chromium; fully aware of its properties, the Doctor had simply thus far not considered its possible application to printing inks. On 24 March, 1857 , patent application was made for "a new Bank Note Printing Ink" of a "permanent and indestructible Color" called "Canada Bank Note Printing Tint". On 1 April 1857 the patent (#715) was granted - but not to Dr. Hunt (who was an American citizen) but rather to a go-between. On the Canadian patent, Dr. Hunt collected royalties for many years; but the additional American patent he sold to Tracy Edson of the bank note printing firm of "Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson" (later part of the American Bank Note Company) "for a trifle". The green tint was a big hit, especially in the U.S. to the extent that their bank notes came to be nicknamed "greenbacks". Once on the trail, Dr. Hunt continued his pursuit as time allowed. In 1863 he patented a newer and even better tint called "Patent Lake Tint". The base of this tint was a combination of "peroxyd of tin" (stannic acid) and "oxyd of chromium" which formed a "mineral lake" to which could be added a large array of mineral "oxyds" to form an almost infinite range of colors, shades and hues. All of them were "insoluble and indestructible", even the notorious red which previous faded even in prolonged exposure to sunlight. Applied for on 18 December 1863 (in his own name, having become a Canadian citizen two days earlier), patent #1641 was granted on 13 January 1864 . But, presumably according to a previous agreement, Dr. Hunt also assigned this patent. The great printing ink breakthrough went hard on the counterfeiters - and probably still does. Today, of course, the technology of both predator and prey has advanced greatly. Current Bank of Canada notes are produced in a sort of layering system, each performed with precision. This starts with special papers containing designated watermarks precisely placed and embedded metallic strips through successive sequences of printing by lithography, intaglio and letterpress to the final application of holographic designs. It would appear impossible for any counterfeiting to be done in a single operation. Or at least the Bank of Canada hopes so. ************************************************************************
Canadian Communion Tokens.
These tokens, most commonly found in lead, tin or "white metal", and in typical shapes of round, oval, square or rectangular, were almost exclusively used by the Calvinist Church of Scotland and its derivatives. In Canada , they were most frequently the Church of Scotland or Presbyterians - but also the breakaway Covenanters, Burghers (and Anti-Burghers), Associate Congregations, United Associate Congregations and the Free Church. Communion tokens seem to have been a Scottish invention. Although there are records of John Calvin himself having introduced them in Switzerland in 1561, subsequent research has turned up an order of 1559 by the Dean of Guild in Edinburgh , Scotland , for the manufacture of such tokens by a local goldsmith. In the era of the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and various Protestant Churches, and a time of great religious intolerance, these tokens were created as a precaution to ensure that the participants at Communion were all legitimate members of that congregation and not spies, government or otherwise. Communion was a major event, occurring only once or twice per year, attracting the faithful for miles around, with Communion Sunday preceded by several services in the days before. Typically, worshipers at the Saturday service were given the tokens, allowing them - and only them - to participate in the Communion. In later years, much of the necessary purposes were obsolete and the use of the tokens more in the manner a ritual. Their heyday in Canada was the early 19th Century when most churches had their own specific tokens, later giving way to "stock tokens" available from church suppliers. Much of their use has ceased although still used here and there on special occasions, sometimes with cardboard tickets used in place of the metal tokens.
Rev. Cook served this congregation until 1798 and died in 1805. His stipend was to be £60 N.S. for the first two years, £70 for the next two years and rising £1 per year thereafter, payable half in cash, half in produce. He very rarely received his full pay, typical of all "country preachers" at the time.
The above token is of another Canadian "first". The Reverend Alexander Dick, a former carpenter, was the first minister ordained by a permanently constituted Presbytery in the Dominion of Canada ( 21 June 1803 ). He was assigned the parish of Douglas (his first and only), which sprawled some 60 miles, but which he faithfully served until his death in 1812. The token shown next is typical of those used by the mid-1800s. Whereas previously the tokens were usually lead, of various shapes and carrying the reverend's name, by this time tokens tended to be an 8-sided-rectangle ("octangular"), composed of "white metal" and "anonymous" so far as the reverend was concerned.
St. Andrew's Church, Chatham, N.B. 1840 White metal, 30 x 19 mm. The above is also typical in that many displayed the same scriptural phrase on the reverse: "Do This in Remembrance of Me" ( I Corinthians Chapter 11 Verse 24) or sometimes with "But Let a Man Examine Himself". Specific communion tokens were used in all four Atlantic Provinces as well as those of Canada East ( Quebec ) and Canada West ( Ontario ). West of the Ontario/Manitoba border they were certainly used but none for a specific location; settlement came to this western area so late that any such congregations were served with "stock tokens". Perhaps the most famous congregation in Canada belonged to the St. Gabriel Street Church in Montreal . Included among its members was the explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, who donated a bell to the church. David Thompson and Duncan Cameron were members as were virtually all the upper echelon of the Northwest Company, such as Simon McTavish, William McGillivray and James McGill (of university fame). Thompson was actually Catholic but so great was the bond among the Northwest Company that all the principals - whether Church of England, Roman Catholic or Church of Scotland - called it home.
The battered lead communion token shown above is of St. Gabriel's first issue. Rev. James Somerville, a former teacher, was ordained pastor of St. Gabriel's in September, 1803, after the departure of the Rev. Mr. Young. Rev. Somerville served until 1824 when his health failed and his assistants took over. This token was not used long at St. Gabriel's, soon being supplanted by another issue struck in white metal of oval shape, also dated 1803. This first issue was withdrawn and sent to the " Scotch Church in Lachine " where it served out its days. The white metal second issue continued in use at St. Gabriel's until 1866 when it was discarded and replaced with yet another oval issue, again in lead. The second issue was sent to the church at St. Therese de Blainville, Que.
Generally speaking, most congregations of the Church of Scotland were served by "stock tokens" such as that above by the 1880s. Quite soon, these tokens became mere cardboard tickets, if used at all. In late years, there has been a minor upsurge of "communion tokens" commemorating various church anniversaries.
Contorniates.
If you like mysteries, here is one that has puzzled collectors of ancient coins for years: the "contorniates". There is quite a wide series of them, but with none being very common. They have been fairly reliably dated to the late Roman Empire - roughly A.D. 400 - and usually have the same general attributes. They are in base metal, usually bronze, and usually measure around 36 mm in diameter. Some seem to have been struck, others cast. What is so very unusual is the artwork for the time, which tends toward the realism of the First or Second Centuries A.D. whereas by A.D. 400, the artwork on coinage was stiff and formal. The obverses usually depict the heads or busts of anonymous men (presumably famous at the time) or those of the early Roman emperors. While contemporary Roman coinage art had become highly religious in nature, that on the contorniates seems to have been exclusively secular, the reverses typically illustrating scenes from the Circuses or Games. Most have legends, typically rendered in the usual highly abbreviated style of the Romans, but we have little or no idea to whom or what they refer. (The one shown above also has an additional 7-ray-sun countermark for reasons unknown). Lastly, all of them have upturned rims - which gives them their name: contorno being Italian for an ornamental border. They aren't coins since they are much larger than any Roman coin at the time and their weights fit into no contemporary coinage category. Then there is the big difference in art style, at times seeming to be sort of palette for the artists of the time. Best guess is that they are one of the world's earliest tokens. Majority vote attributes them as being tickets to the various Games and gladiatorial contests. Yet others see them as an anti-Christian reaction to the new official faith, a sort of token return to earlier pagan times. We may never know.
Early rimming machine (17th or 18th Cent)
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May 2010"Old Security Protectors for Currency" "Early Rimming Machine (Illus.)"
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