Auctori Plebis Token
1787 Auctori Plebis Token. W-8770, Breen-1147. Obverse Brockage--AU-55 (PCGS).
114.8 grains. Uniform dark chocolate brown, glossy surfaces are subtly lustrous and show trouble free light circulation. Obverse centered toward 2:00 with no loss to the legends, while the brockage side is off-center enough for the tops of the letters in PLEBIS to meet the rim. The brockage side is as sharply defined as it possibly could be, given that the obverse design is normally so shallowly and indistinctly rendered. Undoubtedly unique, a freak of survival within a remaining population estimated at just a few hundred pieces. Put in perspective, there are just over 50 brockages surviving in the entire Connecticut copper series of about 350 known die marriages, and brockages are very scarce among many thousands of different die marriages in the entire British trade token series of the 1790s of which this token is technically a part. When we think of brockages, we think of Richard Picker, who amassed a vast collection of them, including several colonial ones that we sold in a series of Coin Galleries auctions, but this is one that eluded him. It is quite literally the best Auctori Plebis copper one could ever own, destined for an advanced holding of Colonial type coins or Connecticut coppers, whose design and legends it copies and imitates.
PCGS# 601.
From the E Pluribus Unum Collection.
Estimate: $3500