Brasher's Golden Coppers.

 

It's an oddity of American numismatic history that one of its greatest rarities was not intended to be rare at all.

Ephraim Brasher (pronounced BRAYzher) was a New York goldsmith/jeweller and a neighbour of George Washington. After the Revolution, the various states were careful to retain money matters in their individual hands – although the result was merely “coppers” rather than any in the nobler metals. Accordingly, in 1787, New York decided to issue their own “coppers” (there was still confusion as to whether the coins were “halfpence” or “cents”) and Basher put in a tender on the issue, having engraved a set of dies as an example.

His tender was unsuccessful and, rather than discard the dies, Brasher used them to coin golden “doubloons” (valued at $16.00 at the time). Each of these coins also carried his goldsmith's mark “E.B.” on the shield or eagle's wing as a guarantee of full weight and purity (the mark is also known on regular Spanish American doubloons for the same reason).

The issue probably wasn't large to begin with since no die varieties are known. In fact only a very few “Brasher Doubloons” have survived and the pricetag of each would now be in excess of a million dollars. Now if they had successfully been made into copper coins …..

Wayne Jacobs is a numismatic expert. Currently secretary and editor of the "Mid-Island Coin Club Numismatic Journal"of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island , British Columbia, he is the award winning author of numerous articles. The MICC journal are hosted here: MICC webpages Copyright 2006 Wayne Jacobs. This article may be reprinted freely for non commercial purpose only if the resource box is left intact, linking back to us.