Engraved Coins, Love Tokens, and Coin Jewelry

Engraved Occupational Piece Fashioned out of an 1849-Dated Braided Hair Large Cent.

This coin has a story to tell! The reverse of the host coin is engraved with WM. H. LYMAN / PHONOGRAPHIC REPORTER / ALBANY / JANUARY 1872. This was a salesman who sold Phonographic Reporters, which were items geared towards stenographers and other office and business people, especially those writing in short-hand. On online search on William Lyman turned up a story about how he was incarcerated for forging checks in 1877, just 5 years after this engraved coin was created! The following was found in the January 1878 issue of Browne’s Phonographic Monthly, a New York based magazine, reprinting an article from the Catskill Record of Dec. 21,1877: “William H. Lyman, one of the check-raisers in jail here, is an expert with the pen aside from the mischievous particular which got him into trouble. He writes visiting cards for ladies, and the other day wrote the Lord’s Prayer upon a card within the circumference of a silver three-cent piece. He is also a first class stenographer, laying a claim to ability to write two hundred words a minute in shorthand. It is a pity that his manifest talents should have been prostituted to illegal operations.”

From the Steve M. Tompkins Collection.

Estimate: $ 200