Circa 1795 North Wales Halfpenny. Two Star Reverse. Musante GW-51, Baker-34A, Breen-1296. Copper. Lettered edge, PAYABLE IN LANCASTER LONDON OR BRISTOL. EF-40 (PCGS).

Uniform dark brown on the obverse while the reverse is a bit lighter, featuring soft mahogany brown tones. A faint scratch over the bust is noted, otherwise most of what might be deemed wear or handling is as made. These were made to look old and worn. They were softly struck from a broken and clashed obverse die that imparted a bit of an abused appearance at the outset. In fact, this is quite pleasing, with good, fairly even detail. Slight slippage in the application of the edge device resulted in partial overlap of LANCASTER and LONDON. Interestingly, this identical situation was noted on the William Spohn Baker specimen in our November 2019 sale. Baker wrote of this lettered edge variety in 1885 by pointing to the specimen in the 1883 Chapman sale of Sylvester Crosby’s collection, where it was described by Haseltine as “perhaps unique.” In Crosby’s own 1875 reference on the early American circulating coinage, he discusses the four-stars reverse type alongside this as both unique, both in his own collection. Today, several are known of each of these variants, and both are well-collected, though both remain relatively rare.

From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Purchased from Bill Murray, January 2013.