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Vol. 10, No.6 June, 2011
"The Early Days of Coinage Aluminum" "The 1966 'Small Beads' Silver Dollar" "The New Brunswick / Hong Kong Patterns"
Above: The token shown (Rulau - NY290 enlarged) looks familiar because it used the same obverse as that for Thomas Brown of Lower Canada (Br-561). In white metal, it may have been a trial issue, as was a similar one for H.E. Thomas & Co. of Louisville , Ky (Rulau KY33). The U.S. tokens are rare with only about 6 known of each. All were struck about 1832 by the firm of Thomas Halliday, Birmingham , England - or at least from dies cut by him. The Mid-Island Coin Club, Dues: $12 per year Mailing Address: Mid-Island Coin Club, c/o West Coast Stamp & Coin, Executive Officers: President: Chris Linfitt
The meeting of May 12 was attended by 33 members and guests, including Jack and Nancy Noble, up from Victoria . The featured speaker was Sgt. Sharyl Armstrong of the R.C.M.P.'s Crime Prevention Unit, who gave a detailed talk on steps we can take to cut down the incidence of crime against our property. The internationally-known Mid-Island Coin Club Barbecue will be held (tentatively) on the second Sunday of August in Parksville. Stay tuned for further details. M/S/C That the Club acquire a projector compatible with computer systems, the cost being in the range of $500 plus taxes. This piece of equipment should be of great help in the presentation of club talks. Slots still need to be filled for the VIEX tables; contact Joan if interested. Ongoing: (1) The acquisition of a couple of showcases for the club. (2) Permanent "hard" nametags for each member (cost presently about $7.20 each). (3) Inscribed coins to be used as gifts for guest speakers. (4) Design to be used for our 10th Anniversary - on whatever is issued at the time. Note on your club calendar: The speaker at the June meeting will be our own Victor Uniat who will give a talk on plate numbers on Canadian currency. This is an area to which we have paid very little attention - so get eddjakated on the 9th.
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Early Days of Coinage Aluminum.
Peculiar stuff, aluminum (or, if you're British, alumin i um ). One of the lightest of all metals, it weighs just 2.7 kilograms per litre. In appearance, it is a bright silvery metal with just a hint of bluish tone. Reputedly, it is highly tarnish-free, but in fact aluminum will tarnish almost instantaneously in air; but this layer - only a molecule or so deep - acts as a shield against further chemical change. It melts at 660°C but as those with little else to do will know, it burns quite readily with a bluish or greenish flame, as can be proven with a scrap of aluminum wire in the fireplace. The British became all too aware of this property when one of their aluminum warships burnt to the waterline during the Falkland Islands War. It is highly malleable and ductile and resistant to many chemicals and substances, particularly food. Its electrical conductivity is exceeded only by gold, silver and copper (thus its use as wiring). It's interesting to know that both the gemstones ruby and sapphire are mostly aluminum oxide. There's lots of aluminum in the world. In fact about 8% of the earth's crust is composed of it. But , always in association with other element(s), never pure. It's the refining process that has always been the stumbling block, the reason that the first pure aluminum commanded an extremely high price, and even today when it's relatively cheap, it still requires costly smelting plants powered by huge amounts of cheap electricity. Our own Kitimat smelter is powered by its own major hydroelectric facility - and uses about the same amount of electricity as all the rest of B.C. combined. Although predicted as early as 1782 by Lavoisier ( France ) working on the properties of alumina ore, aluminum itself was not isolated until 1825 by Hans Christian Oersted of Denmark - and then in an impure form. His method: heating potassium amalgam with anhydrous aluminum chloride, followed by distilling off the mercury. It was not so much a case of extracting aluminum as extracting everything else but the aluminum. Using a similar method, Woehler of Germany isolated aluminum powder in 1827. Simultaneously in 1854, Deville (France) and Bunsen ( Germany ) discovered that the substitution of sodium instead of the potassium amalgam was much more efficient and cheaper. When Deville exhibited the aluminum at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, Napoleon III commissioned him to improve the method and lower the cost. Emperor Napoleon was very much taken by aluminum. He had a table service made of what was then a rare and expensive metal and reserved its use only to his most favoured guests; the rest had to make do with only ordinary gold. That custom probably went by the board when Deville successfully pursued his commission and aluminum dropped in price from $115 to $17 per pound by 1859. All the same, these were Troy pounds, aluminum counted as a noble metal, along with gold, silver and platinum. In England , the Newcastle firm of J. Bell began to produce aluminum in 1858 but the factory soon closed due to lack of demand because of aluminum's high cost. Before 1880, the entire U.S. domestic production of aluminum was never more than 3000 Troy ounces per annum. The big breakthrough in aluminum production came in the early 1880s as a result of the experimentation of Hall, an American from Oberlin , Ohio . The process, still used in modified form, consisted of dissolving alumina ore in molten cryolite at a temperature of 960°C and passing an electric current through the bath. Heroult of France discovered the same process at nearly the same time. By the 1970s, world production of aluminum was in excess of 20-billion pounds annually, each pound representing 6-8 kilowatts of power, 0.6 pounds of carbon, 1.9 pounds alumina ore and 0.1 pound cryolite. As early as 1885, aluminum's world price had dropped to $8 per pound; its low point was just before WWII when it stood at 15¢. Since then, the increasing cost of power and raw materials has caused it to rise again. It was also the U.S. that first made use of aluminum as a coining metal - but only in the form of patterns. The very first was a half-dollar pattern of 1855 of which only one example is known to exist. But beginning some ten years later, and extending well into the 1890s, aluminum was increasingly used as U.S. patterns. Britain seems to have gotten into the act with a pattern aluminum 1/3-Farthing of 1861. We should again note that the earliest of such patterns were being struck in what was a "noble metal" at the time.
U.S.A. Pattern aluminum 5-Cent, 1867. Judd-561. About 40 known today.
Even so, there was some suggestions made in introducing aluminum into U.S. coinage during the Civil War. The then-Engraver at Philadelphia , James B. Longacre, suggested that the 10% copper content in the silver denominations be replaced by 5% aluminum, freeing copper for war needs and resulting in silver coins as durable - and more attractive - than before. Longacre was a big booster of aluminum and even after the War, when the saving of copper was no factor, he continued to produce aluminum patterns: in 1868 he produced patterns in all 16 denominations and as a custom-cased set, presented it to Mint Director Henry R. Linderman.
One special set of six aluminum pattern trade dollars dated 1873 was made up for Linderman for presentation to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. This set came on the market about 1990 and achieved some fame when it was purchased by Wayne Gretsky for $137,500. Lots of tests were done on aluminum as a coin alloy, not always with positive results. Aluminum-gold had weird colors ranging from yellowish-green to purple. An alloy of 10% aluminum / 90% gold had a melting temperature lower than aluminum alone but 22% aluminum / 78% gold higher than gold alone. Tumbling tests were also performed with such alloys as 98% aluminum / 2% nickel. Aluminum's first foray into the world of actual coins came as an empowerment of an Order-in-Council of the British Parliament ( 30 June 1906 ) which directed the Royal Mint to strike aluminum 1/10th-Penny pieces for Nigeria (" British West Africa " on the coins). In 1906, the mintage of these coins was 1,254,000, making it the world's first aluminum coin ; the issue was followed in 1907 with a further 8,363,000 pieces. At nearly the same time, the British struck very similarly-appearing aluminum coins for Uganda (" East Africa " on the coins). In 1907, a mintage of 6,948,000 aluminum cents were coined, followed in 1908 by 900,000 aluminum half-cents and 2,871,000 aluminum cents. We should note that for both denominations there exist what would appear to be rare patterns or trial strikes for the years leading up to the main issues (half-cents dated 1907 and cents dated 1906).
In neither case were aluminum coins a success. In both cases their tendency to corrosion due to high humidity and perspiration rendered them less than viable and all were soon replaced by copper-nickel pieces of the same designs.
After this start, aluminum retreated to a sort of "emergency metal". During the Mexican Revolution, for instance, a private firm in Denver , U.S.A. struck an issue of aluminum centavos for the state of Durango , Mexico in 1914. This year, of course, saw the outbreak of the Great War and very soon numbers of emergency tokens began to appear as copper and nickel was withdrawn for war purposes. The numbers of private, corporate, municipal and state tokens were particularly large in France , Germany and Austria . They could be in any "cheap" metal (such as zinc) or aluminum. Even so, at the national level the world's first aluminum coin issue for an independent major state was that of the German aluminum pfennigs, beginning with a 1916 issue struck at the Karlsruhe Mint (G mintmark) - which is, nevertheless, quite rare today. The heyday of the aluminum pfennigs was in 1917 when they appeared in large numbers from several mints (those dated 1918 are on the scarce side)
It was this issue that set in motion aluminum as a recognized national coinage metal. With the inflation that followed WWI. Germany herself brought out an aluminum 50-pfg piece in 1919; followed by an aluminum 3-mark in 1922 and both a 200- and 500-mark in the very next year. Other countries that soon followed were Romania (1921), Greece (1922) and Bulgaria (1923). Aluminum increasingly became commonplace. For many years, an associated ore necessary for the refining of pure aluminum was "cryolite" (sodium aluminum fluoride) with the largest deposit located on the west coast of Greenland at Ivigtut. This ore body began to be exploited as early as 1854 by a company that came to be known as the "Ivigtut Cryolite Mining and Trading Company". The "company store" soon required tokens and the first issue - all uniface zinc - were used 1859-65 in denominations of 1-, 4-, 16- and 48-skilling as well as a 1-rigsdaler.
Over the years, there were a total of four issues. That shown above left , a 16-skilling, is of the first; all tokens were similar except for the mark of value, the rigsdaler being marked "1RD". To the right is shown an example of the fourth issue, dated 1922 but actually struck in 1926 at the Copenhagen Mint. This last set was also similar to one another, size and denomination excepted. A set consisted of 10- and 50- Ø re pieces, as well as those of 2- and 10-kronur. All denominations are in copper-nickel - except for the 10-kronur which about half the time exists in aluminum-bronze. Only the fourth issue can be considered anything less than scarce or very rare. (The cryolite deposit, incidentally, ran out in 1987).
The First Modern Bank Notes.
It wasn't that paper financial instruments were unknown in Europe before the Seventeenth Century. The rough equivalent of bills of exchange, promissory notes and even bank drafts had been around for centuries. Sharp operators had even discovered the benefits of "company store" paper chits, valueless except in that one location. But a true paper currency, able to be passed from hand to hand and backed by a strong institution such as a bank - or even the government - was as yet unknown there. The paper notes of the Chinese, used in the 1300s and before, were the stuff of legend in Europe ; no one was sure how the eastern "flying currency" had worked. The first true bank notes - or official paper currency of any kind - arose in Sweden during the third quarter of the Seventeenth Century. And as might be expected, it began as an emergency measure. During the 1600s, Sweden was a major power in Europe , even possessing colonies on the northern European mainland. But empires are expensive, as are the religious wars that were constant until about 1648. Sweden 's natural resources were limited, the most valuable being metals: lots of copper (counted as the best in the world), a fair amount of silver and some gold. Even so, Sweden frequently suffered what we call today a "negative trade balance", the Swedish treasury spending more than it took in. In a day when "currency" was considered as only hard coin, with a bullion value equal to (or just a hair under) face, such spending could expect to result in massive amounts of coin requiring to be struck. And that was exactly what happened. Surviving records show mintage figures for a given issue sometimes reaching millions of pieces - huge for the time. Yet today, all are fairly scarce. Collectors will note that the Swedish coinage of the 17th Century has tremendous breadth but limited depth. While there are a lot of denominations and series, few were coined for more than a few years. Even the lowly copper pieces seldom appeared as a series for more than 15 years. Inflation was causing constant withdrawal, revaluation, lightening and debasement, only to be overhauled on new standards. To accommodate foreign payments, Sweden had a simultaneous "trade coinage" in the form of gold ducats, always of constant fineness and weight. Perhaps the most unusual was the "plate money", coined from about 1644 to 1776. These were square or rectangular plates of copper containing by weight the equivalent bullion value of silver coins and were consequently very large. The most common denominations were the ½ -, 1- and 2-daler "S.M." (= "silvermynt" or equivalent silver coin), but in 1644 and '45 there also appeared 10-daler S.M. plates (about 70x30 cm. and weighing around 20 kilograms). Hardly pocket change. But these were frequently treated as mere stamped pieces of bullion, soon exported and melted when the price went up. When the large plates were minted in 1644, a "skeppund" (= 136 kg.) of pure copper was worth 69 dalers in silver coin; by 1660, the same weight was valued at 90 dalers.
Sweden . Copper "plate money", 2 Daler, 1714. Actual size: 24 x 23cm. Center stamp reads: "2 / DALER / Sölff.Myt" over crossed arrows, signifying copper from the Stora Kopparberg and Ljusnarsberg deposits. Corner stamps all crown over 1714 surrounded by king's legends (Charles XII, 1697-1718)
The whole situation cried out for a medium consisting of certificates of value with little or no intrinsic value; in other words, paper money. But paper money as we know it had not yet appeared in Europe . Still, it was in Sweden , in the year 1661, that it did so - and in the form of bank notes at that, the bank being the Stockholm Banco, operated by one Johan Palmstruch. Johan Palmstruch was born in 1611 in Riga , then a Swedish possession. He and his brothers undertook the vocation of bankers, receiving their working education in Amsterdam (certainly) and possibly Hamburg as well. In 1642, they returned to Sweden and for some years attempted to establish a bank there operating along the lines of the Dutch and German ones. Palmstruch proposed a rather ambitious scheme to Queen Christina in 1652 but approval hung fire until 1656 when he obtained a "Royal Privilege" from Christina's successor, King Karl X Gustav. One year later, the Stockholm Banco began operations with branches soon established in other cities. To address the problems of scarcity of coin and the cumbersomeness of the copper plates, Palmstruch proposed - and was granted permission - to issue notes on his bank which he called "Kreditivsedlar" (from Latin "creditivus" = "deserving confidence"), the first of which appeared 16 July 1661. Printed on specially prepared paper by the Uddby Mills near Stockholm , with a BANCO watermark as an anti-counterfeiting device, these were actually commodity notes and apparently issued in many denominations and "currencies". Unfortunately, not a single note seems to have survived from this first issue but supporting records show that at minimum there were 24 denominations of "Coppermynt" notes, 11 of the "Silvermynt", 11 of "rixdalers" and probably some in "ducats". Since copper and silver bullion prices rarely rise and fall in lockstep, the "coppermynt" (= copper money) notes would be good for, say, 10 dalers of copper at current market prices while a 10-daler "silvermynt" note would be equivalent to that much silver, also at current market price. In this way, the notes at least flowed along with inflation and market fluctuations rather than being rolled over by them.
Note for 10-Daler ("Dal. 10. Sölf.Mynt), 21 May 1666 . Serial no. 1797. Third type. In general appearance, the previous two types were apparently similar.
We do know that the denominations of the first issue were written in by hand, and possibly it was the danger of such denominations being "raised" on the notes that caused them to be replaced within a year. Issued between 1662 and 1664, these replacement notes had printed denominations. Only 11 examples of this issue have survived, all of which are reputedly institutionalized in Sweden . It is of the Third Issue (1666) that a collector stands a remote chance of obtaining a note. Of even higher manufacturing standards than the first two, this issue consisted of only four denominations, all of them "silvermynt". The denominations and quantities originally issued were: 10 Daler Silvermynt (2500 notes); 25 Daler Silvermynt (1000 notes); 50 Daler Silvermynt (1000 notes) and 100 Daler Silvermynt (500 notes). These were large notes, that shown actually measures 19cm x 15cm. Less than 60 notes have survived in total of this issue, more than half institutionalized. The few in private hands seldom appear on the market; that shown is from an auction held in 1986 when it was assigned an "estimated value" of $10,000 - $15,000 U.S. Oddly, all four denominations are of roughly equal rarity, about as many of the 100 Daler having survived as the lowly 10 Daler. Except for a tiny issue of "Transfer Notes" (30 issued of 100 Daler Silvermynt in 1667), this was the last issue of the Stockholm Banco. Already it was in difficulty and finally liquidated in 1668. Johan Palmstruch, creator of the first European paper money, died poor in 1671. It would be at least 1716 before paper money appeared in Sweden again.
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The 1966 "Small Beads" Silver Dollar.
What was the 1966 "Small Beads" silver dollar? In brief, it was a mule, combining the "Small Beads" obverse used in 1965 with a 1966 reverse, by which time the new "Large Beads" were standard. Collectors have long speculated as to the authenticity of these pieces, there being considerable doubt as to whether or not they were not an "unofficial" issue - which is to say, a "back door job", another of the several instances of jiggery-pokery occurring in and around the Mint at this time. But circumstantial evidence seems to show that it was not , and rather the result of a couple of mistakes, mistakes that were understandable when we examine the tenor of the times. The silver dollar obverse introduced with the new Machin portrait of the Queen in 1965 bore the "Small Beads". Through that year, the beading on the master die was made (briefly) "medium" beads and then "Large", these last being carried through without break until the last "circulating" silver dollar was struck in 1967. The mistake that comprised the 1966 "Small Beads" error was not made in Ottawa but rather in its satellite mint in Hull , P.Q. , just across the river, which was responsible for the striking of "collectors' coins" at the time, including the proof-like sets. We can be reasonably certain of this since Stephen Dushnik ("Silver & Nickel Dollars of Canada, 1911 to Date", 1978) could write "we have heard of at least one being found in a proof-like set" - even though the Charlton catalogue still does not list one in proof-like. However : the Charlton catalogue does note that the conditions of those known as usually a combination of proof-like and business strike, another way of saying that they would appear to be impaired proof-likes, coins struck as normal PL-65 or so and then subjected to nicks, clatter and abrasions by being shipped loosely in a bag.
1966 "Large Beads" Silver Dollar (common) 1966 "Small Beads" Silver Dollar (rare) A of REGINA points at bead. A of REGINA points between beads. Although the Great Canadian Coin Bubble had popped in the spring of 1965, a fair amount of collectors' coins were still struck: 672,514 proof-like sets in 1966. This was a large drop from the nearly 3-million ordered in 1965 but nearly all the '65 sets coined in Hull were of the early "Small Beads" variety. Only in the most recent times have we appreciated the fact that 1965 "Large Beads" proof-like sets are much scarcer than the "Small" (and so far as we know, no "Medium Beads" 1965 dollars appeared in proof-like sets). That being the case, it is not unreasonable to believe that a spare "Small Beads" obverse die might still be lying around in Hull after the ordered change was made. It is also not too difficult to believe that it might be used without noticing it was of the incorrect variety - even collectors have to closely examine the 1965 silver dollars to determine the various "Beads". As a die, it might be yet harder still. The fact remains that a "Small Bead" obverse was used in 1966. It is also evident that after having struck a quantity of silver dollars for the sets, the mistake was discovered - possibly it was the very first die used in 1966 since otherwise it might have passed unnoticed, in which case today we would have a lot more 1966 "Small Bead" dollars, all in sealed proof-like sets. But apparently the mistake was discovered before the sets were assembled and shipped, the offending coins gathered up and shipped to the Ottawa Mint for melting and manufacture into new blanks. The shipping in this fashion, of course, would be part of the cause that most survivors appear to be impaired proof-likes. Now came Mistake Number Two. In Ottawa , not all the defective dollars were returned to the melting pot. Somehow, a small quantity (for some reason, the Charlton catalogues of the early 1970s give a precise figure of 485) were loaded into a mint bag with normal 1966 business-strike dollars and shipped to a branch of one of the chartered banks. There they were dispersed but almost immediately discovered by eagle-eyed collectors. Oddly, very little has been written about this phase of the coin's history. We only know that their relative rarity was soon recognized and circulation combed for other survivors. At the outset, a value in excess of $100 was placed on them and so quickly were they garnered that today they are mostly known in MS-60 and up, with only a few grading as low as AU. But of course the $100 value is long gone; expect to lay out a minimum of $3000 for the worst condition.
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The New Brunswick / Hong Kong Patterns.
Whenever the new coinages of two entities coincide in time, place and manufacturer, there is a great possibility - even probability - of a certain amount of mix-and-match switching, at least in the pattern stage. Such was the case of the two British colonies of New Brunswick and Hong Kong . New Brunswick 's silver coinage appeared in 1862, that of Hong Kong in 1863. Both were struck at the Royal Mint, London , from master dies cut by Leonard C. Wyon, Chief Engraver of the Mint. And there were three overlaps.
The above pattern is the only one of the three assigned to New Brunswick ; after all, that is the only place named and the reverse is somewhat reminiscent of the arabesque reverses found on Newfoundland silver a few years later. In most respects, the pattern is like the New Brunswick regular 10-Cent coins: weight, diameter and edge reeding are all the same - but the pattern's die axis is hh instead of hi on the regular 10-Cent. Despite this, there is a good possibility that even this recognized " New Brunswick 10-Cent pattern" is really a Hong Kong piece as well. The New Brunswick silver coins were all first produced in 1862 and with bronze cents (as well as half-cents in error) in 1861, we might assume that the pattern work had already been completed by 1862. In any case, the Royal Mint took the easy way out with the N.B. 10-Cent: both sides were adaptations from the master tools used to strike the same denomination for the Province of Canada in 1858.
The above pattern shows no place of origin yet is comfortably assigned to Hong Kong on the basis of its obverse being that of the colony's regular 10-Cent pieces as they first appeared in 1863. The reverse is the same die as used on the New Brunswick pattern (or, perhaps, the " New Brunswick " pattern).
The above example is a muling of patterns, combining the New Brunswick obverse with a Hong Kong pattern reverse that reads: HONG - KONG 1862 around TEN / CENTS within a wreath. It was never used on regular coin. As yet another pattern, this same reverse is known in combination with the standard Hong Kong obverse as it later appeared in 1863 on the regular coin. But no one has attempted to kidnap this particular pattern for the Canadian series - nor should they. As may be seen, in the world of the "might-have-beens", there are many strange creatures.
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June 2011"The Early Days of Coinage Aluminum" "The 1966 'Small Beads' Silver Dollar" "The New Brunswick / Hong Kong Patterns"
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