1787 New Jersey Copper. Maris 73-aa, W-5430. Rarity-4. Plaited Mane--Overstruck on a Connecticut Copper--VF-25 (PCGS).
145.0 grains. 29.1 mm. An attractive and important specimen of this popular and scarce variety, ranked as the tenth finest example known in the SHI Census. The surfaces are chocolate brown with brassy tan devices, largely smooth and mostly attractive. The centering is excellent on both sides, with the obverse displaying a full date and both sides exhibiting their full complement of devices and legends (save for NOVA, which is not visible on the vast majority of specimens due to a die failure). A nice frame of denticles is seen at the base of the reverse. Magnified scrutiny finds some smoothing in areas, including around the plowbar and beyond its tip, the area around AES atop the obverse, between and beneath the plow handles, a patch right of the truncation of the horsehead, and at the lower left reverse periphery. As usual, the softness created by the die failure in the upper left obverse left the undertype visible there and the portion of the reverse opposite it. LIR: from a Connecticut undertype is seen at the end of the plow handles and NEC: from CONNEC is easily visible to the lower left of the reverse shield. The detail is excellent, probably closer to EF than VF by virtue of wear alone. As sometimes happens in the production of numismatic catalogs, two descriptions and photographs got mismatched in the 1955 Spiro catalog, and it's been confusing New Jersey collectors ever since. The coin described as Spiro:1616 ("V. Fine shattered die. Over Conn. Maris knew of three. Ex. Rare attempted puncture.") was without question the coin we sold as E Pluribus Unum lot 6220. It has an attempted puncture (a drill mark, really) in the top part of the shield. Alas, the plate that is labeled 1616 in Spiro is actually of the present coin, which was actually described as lot 1619 ("V. Fine. Weakly struck over 1787 Conn reading ET LIR:. V. Rare."). So, to clarify: Spiro:1616 is EPU:6220, Spiro:1617 is SHI Census #5 (Fatto), Spiro:1618 is EPU:6216, and Spiro:1619 is this coin. This is listed as one of six VF coins ranked between positions 6 and 11 in the SHI Census. The two pieces atop the census were sold as lots 6216 and 6217 in our November 2019 E Pluribus Unum Collection; your cataloger prefers the second ranked coin to the first, and notes that EPU:6218 deserves a high rank as well.
PCGS# 763355.
From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier from Hans M.F. Schulman's sale of the Jacob N. Spiro Collection, March 1955, lot 1619; F.C.C. Boyd Collection; Boyd Estate to John J. Ford, Jr.; our (Stack's) sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part I October 2003, lot 216; Lawrence R. Stack Collection, November 2006.