A33, Lot 212:
George III. Emergency countermark issue. Draped bust US dollar, 1799. 26.84 gm. 39 mm. Octagonal counterstamp of the head of George III on 1799 US dollar. S. 3766B (£30,000 in VF, unpriced in Extremely Fine). This is the Standard Catalog plate coin. The dollar is BB-164. (Bolender 17; Haseltine 17). Good Extremely Fine; substantial original luster; lightly toned; obverse with three short "bag" marks in front of neck, a few light scratches, die state I-III. The reverse is die state III with a hairline die break through UNITED ST Overall, a beautiful and exciting coin with a substantial history.
Ex. Norweb. 1986 (November, 1986, lot 1037, realized £5400, the same price as a Henry VIII spur ryal, an equivalent example of which achieved $120,000 plus 17% commission , net $140,400, in CNG Electronic Auction 312)
The piece was purchased for the Norweb collection from Spink in 1957.
•The Norweb catalog notes that there are only five known examples of this countermark on an early American dollar. Both the British Museum and the Bank of England have specimens.
•Another was sold by Spink in Auction 3, February 1979, lot 480, ex Whetmore, for £5600. It was graded "good very fine to extremely fine" and the photo suggests that the impact of the countermark flattened all the detail of the eagle on the reverse.
•The Gibbs sale in New York (Schulman, New York, November 1960) sold an example of a 1798 dollar with an octagonal countermark. Lot 100, graded extremely fine. (The Gibbs catalog noted that only one other was known, in the British Museum.)
•The most recent sale of an example was sold in St. James Auction 9, June 2008 for £12000 plus commissions (US$28740 all in). The 1799 coin was graded "almost very fine", (more likely F-15 based on the photograph). This was apparently a sixth example though no pedigree was published with it.
Currency in silver and copper was in short supply in Georgian (II & III) Britain. Crowns and half crowns were issued in 1751 and it was 66 years until these denominations were issued in 1816. Shillings were marginally more common with a small issue in 1763 and a larger issue (£55,479 total value for shillings and sixpence) in 1787. The answer to this lack of small change was tokens. The 18th century copper token series as cataloged by Dalton and Hamer was a response to this lack as was the 19th century copper series as cataloged by Davis and the two year series, 1811 and 1812 of silver tokens as cataloged by Dalton.
An Order in Council issued in March 1797 allowed people to bring dollars to the Bank of England. The Spanish dollar was valued at 4s, 9d (high given the content of the Spanish dollar) and between the 1797 authorization and the 1799 authorization, well over three million were counterstamped. (Lot 211; Lot 213, the 4 reales is part of a small group of Spanish mint pieces that were part of the formal countermark process. Other “off” denominations or types are generally considered spurious.)
The 1804 authorization with the octagonal countermark resulted in just over 400,000 pieces being processed. Then in 1804 the Bank of England began issuing dollars with the design completely covering over the design on the host coin (see lot 214.) This piece had royal permission but was not regal coinage.
The dollar size coin helped with the currency shortage but small change was still an issue. The 1811-1812 series of private issue silver tokens (mostly shillings) sought to fill this gap but many of the pieces were underweight and their acceptance was sketchy. Their use was made illegal in 1813. The Bank of England was allowed, in 1811, to issue smaller silver change: three-shilling (see lots 215 and 216) and eighteen penny pieces (lots 217 and 218), denominations without parallel in the regal series.
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