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| The Cossack Token.
By Wayne L. Jacobs, FCNRS
(reprinted by permission from “The Canadian Token”, March, 1998)
The penny catalogued as Breton-985 or Charlton-WE13 is an odd piece. Its status and place within Canadian numismatics has been consistently disagreed upon and its attribution in flux. Initially considered to be just a Nineteenth Century English token, it was enthusiastically adopted by many Canadian collectors after 1870 as a true Canadian token – partly due to its resemblance to the Wellington “Battle Penny” (Br-984, Ch-WE12) and partly due to dealers' desire to broaden their stock. Neither R.W. McLachlan nor Thomas Wilson would admit this token to the Canadian series. When listed in what can be considered the first real catalogue of the English Nineteenth Century Token series alone – W.J. Davis' work of 1904 – it appears under “ Yorkshire #92”.
“Standard belief” by Canadian collectors in 1960 was best expressed in the 1960/1 CNJ series by R.C. Willey. At that time, he catalogued this coin as one of the Wellington series, all of which were intended for circulation in Yorkshire , England , but, after their redemption there, were bought up by agents and imported into Canada with “additional varieties of lighter weight emerging from local sources in this country”. The status of the “Cossack” again changed with the R.C. Bell work “Copper Commercial Coins 1811-19” (1964). This book placed it under “Pennies Issued for the Use of British Forces in Spain ” and the Cossack on the reverse was believed to commemorate Napoleon's retreat from Moscow . Willey again (CNJ, 1979-83, “Colonial Coinages of Canada”) placed it under “Doubtful Coinages”, believing it to be an English token imported by collectors after 1870 and having never been used here. Finally, the Charlton catalogues of “Canadian Colonial Tokens” to the third edition of 1996 place them under “Peninsular Pennies” in agreement with Bell . A good deal of this confusion is due to a marked lack of source information. The English token series of the late 1700s was enthusiastically collected and catalogued – with the works of Condor and Pye only two of the best known. In addition, there was the continuing writings of Welch who released information as it happened (in much the same way as Jerry Remick does today with the Canadian Trade Tokens). Very little of the above pertained to the Nineteenth Century Token series. It was a spartan, utilitarian series; intended for trade and not much collected, it achieved this goal to a large extent. Little background information was preserved and less published. When the series was first catalogued (not until 1834 in the Sharp catalogue of the Chetwynd collection), it was mostly an appendix to the larger series of the 1700s. Such collecting as there was mostly confined itself to the silver portion of the series and the copper part has always been neglected. With these deficiencies, it's a wonder we know anything about the Wellington series. Oddly, we do – and even more oddly, more about the Cossack than the rest of the Wellingtons in the Canadian series. There are two main sources: the background notes in Davis and a solid piece of research that has been ignored and overlooked for decades – Bert Koper's “The History of the Cossack Token” in the October, 1938 issue of “Canadian Coin Topics”. With these (and a few timid inferences), we can piece together much of the “5W”s of the “Cossack Token”. Within a very limited timespan, we know when it was struck; we know why; we can give an educated guess as to how many; we know the designer, the die engraver and the mint; we even know who the Cossack is on the reverse. And we know why upper condition “Cossacks” are much easier to acquire than any of the other Wellington pennies. Below is a pertinent section from the Koper article, much of itself a direct copy from a contemporary English newspaper: “The Cossack penny, although not dated, was without doubt struck in the year 1813. In April of that year, there visited London a Russian Cossack named Alexander Wittischendst. He was entertained by the Lord Mayor and gave an exhibition of his skill in Hyde Park . The contemporary newspaper describes his appearance in the following words: ‘The gallant hero of the hour will carry all his arms, the musket slung at his back, the sabre at his side, his pistol in his belt, his pike resting on his right foot, held with the right hand in the middle. We are assured that three French officers and 36 private soldiers fell under his single arm; the latter he calls “the fry”. He was at Mr. Ackermann's on Thursday to sit for his picture. The prints were ready on April 24 at Akermann's, 101 Strand . Coloured, 5s. Proofs with signature, 10s6d' This man was quite a ‘sight of London ' during his short stay and no doubt the Cossack Penny appeared soon afterwards.” The portraitist Ackermann would be Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834) who had established a print-shop and drawing school in the Strand in 1795. A many-sided man, Ackermann had been a saddler and coachbuilder, patented a method for rendering cloth and paper waterproof in 1801, established one of the first true lithographic presses in his shop in 1817, published a number of illustrated travel guides, developed a practical method for illumination by gas and still found time to collect a quarter-million pounds for the relief of German sufferers after the Battle of Leipzig. It is probably no coincidence that the description of the Ackermann portrait of Wittischendst is so similar to the reverse of the Cossack Penny. Almost certainly it was design from which the die was sunk – which by its very style, we know to have been by Thomas Halliday (or at least his shop) in Birmingham . Further, all of the features of this coin's design and fabric is synonymous with the rest of the Wellington pennies – all of which were struck at the mint of Sir Edward Thomason in Birmingham . In fact, Halliday did a great deal of Thomason's diework on an out-worker, contract basis and their establishments were only a short distance apart. There is but a single die variety of the Cossack (although proofs exist) and, since Thomason does not appear to have been equipped to hub dies, we may assume that all the Cossacks were struck from a single set of dies – and that would limit their total issue to 40,000 pieces and may have been somewhat less. The writer infers the above “hub” statement for the following reason: the Thomason mintage of the halfpenny Wellington “Battle Tokens” (Br-987/Ch-WE11 and Br-986/Ch-WE11B), possess the following number of distinct die varieties – 7 (plus a possible counterfeit) and 8 (although there may be obverse mules with the 987). This indicates that no means of die replication was being used – even though the initial issues were large – and that each set of dies had to be individually sunk. Therefore, the Cossack used but one set. Fame is a fleeting thing and while Wittischendst's visit to London was apparently spectacular, its effect was probably also brief. Ackermann cashed in on the “souvenir trade” with his prints and it would seem that some unknown entrepreneur did the same with the Cossack Penny. For the rest of the Wellington “Peninsular” pieces, J.K. Picard was agent between the minter (Thomason) and the user (British army in Spain ) but there is absolutely no indication that he had anything to do with the Cossack Penny – and probably didn't. In order for the enterprise to succeed, it had to be done quickly and that would mean the order for them being placed directly after the appearance of the Ackermann design and the coins themselves making their debut sometime during the next several weeks. As a “souvenir issue”, they would not have been intended for circulation (although this could be done), but rather hawked through the streets at a shilling or two apiece. Since the Wittischendst stir seems to have limited to London , it is highly probable that this city was also the place of release. Also, as a souvenir issue, an inordinant amount of them would have been preserved from wear so that today specimens in the upper conditions are much easier to come by than the regular Wellington pennies issued for the British troops – even though these latter would have been struck in greater numbers. There is a small mystery. The last battle on the obverse of the Cossack Penny is Salamanca (July 22, 1812) – which is, incidentally, the same as that of the Br-987/Ch-WE11 “Battle Halfpenny”. Between Salamanca and the appearance of the Cossack Penny, there occurred the victory at Madrid (August 12, 1812) and it seems odd that this would not have been included. From Sir Edward Thomason's memoirs as quoted in parts of the Davis catalogue, we know that the initial portrait of Wellington for the tokens was done from a bust of him supplied by his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Wellesley-Pole, in early 1812. The writer is merely thinking out loud when he considers the possibility that the obverse die for the Cossack Penny was really the first sunk but not used until later. Following the victory at Salamanca, Wellington was apparently granted the title of “Field Mashall” and it could be that the Cossack obverse was replaced by those of Br-970a/Ch-WE4A and Br-970b/Ch-WE4B, both of which are invariably (or nearly so) overstruck on Guppy pennies, indicating that they probably appeared in late 1812 or early 1813 although undated. When the order for the Cossacks was received, it may have been merely a matter of economy for Thomason to strike the pieces from the older unused die already on hand, thus saving him the expense of having another engraved.
In summing up, the writer believes the following to be true of the enigmatic Cossack Penny: In April 1813, London society was treated to the brief but spectacular visit of the Russian cavalry hero Alexander Wittischendst, commemorated with Ackermann prints and a “souvenir token” by some unknown entrepreneur. The issue was struck at Sir Edward Thomason's mint, Birmingham , with an unused obverse die from the Peninsular series and a new reverse by Thomas Halliday, the central figure being a copy of the Ackermann print. The minting and sale (rather than circulation) of them would have occurred in May or early June, 1813, with the majority of the rather limited issue (not over 40,000 coins) appearing in the London area, saved so that today they are actually commoner – particularly in the upper grades – than the regular Peninsular ennies. Over the next few decades, Wittischendst became forgotten, as did the reason behind the Cossack Penny which came to be regarded as merely another token within the anonymous category of the Nineteenth Century English Token series. After 1870 – and particularly in the 1880s and 90s – the relatively new Canadian numismatic community tended to gather in anything that could be construed as "Canadian" and the Cossack's resemblance to the more “legitimate” “Battle Penny”, was also included, aided and abetted by dealers as well as collectors. Canadian demand for this coin was much greater than in its native Britain, McLachlan telling us that he (despite the fact that he refused to call it “Canadian”), imported some half dozen from an English dealer for 3s6d (about 85-cents Canadian) and had no trouble in disposing of them at $2-3 each. By the time that Davis catalogued them in 1904, he was forced to give a designation of “scarce” even though it was “only due to demand from America ”. So the Cossack Penny seems to be an “FCO” (For Collectors Only), not intended for circulation by the British Army in Spain or even in Britain itself. McLachlan and Wilson were right: it has absolutely nothing to do with Canada . Even so, as a collector, the writer would be as saddened as any to see this handsome coin – perhaps the best of Halliday's designs – be dropped/ignored/expelled from the Canadian token series. It has a life and story of its own; surely we can accept the truth while ignoring it if we so choose. Just because we want to.
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OctoberRenaissance of U.S. Coinage, 1907-21. Part 2 The Back Design of the 1954 $2 Note
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