Rare New York Excelsior Copper
New York Arms / Heraldic Eagle Reverse Eagle Facing Right
1787 Excelsior Copper. W-5780. Rarity-6+. Eagle on Globe Facing Right, Arrows at Right. VF-35 (PCGS).
A very rare coin, much more so than the variety with the eagle facing left. Well centered for the type, with all legends and design elements on the planchet. An excellent strike showing most of the skirt lines of Liberty and Justice, as well as considerable detail in the eagle's plumage. Moderate, even wear on a smooth dark brown planchet, with some light crimson surface scale on the reverse. There are three basic varieties of this type, combining an obverse with the New York Arms and the word EXCELSIOR with a Heraldic Eagle reverse. One of those varieties shows a Heraldic Eagle with the arrows in the talon at left, the so-called Transposed Arrows reverse, W-5775. The other two use the same Heraldic Eagle dies but two different New York Arms dies, one showing the tiny eagle atop the shield facing to the left (W-5785) and the other, as seen here, showing that tiny eagle facing to the right. The Transposed Arrows variety is the rarest, with just six known. This is the rarer of the two others. Michael Hodder enumerated nine examples in our (Bowers and Merena's) March 1988 Norweb sale, with at least two duplicate listings: 1 - The Norweb coin, then graded Fine-15. Earlier ex Zabriskie, 1909. 2 - The NN48 coin (New Netherlands, November 1956, lot 771). Earlier ex Bushnell and Jackman, later in the 1988 Dabney Caldwell and 2000 ANA sales. Very Fine. 3 - The Robison coin, the present example . 4 - The Garrett coin (Bowers and Ruddy, November 1979, lot 598). Ex Stickney. Extremely Fine, or so, with minor planchet defects. 5 - The Roper coin (Stack's, December 1983, lot 272). Sold (without provenance) in the May 2022 Henry Dittmer "Long Island Collection" sale as NGC AU-58 for $105,000. 6 - Massachusetts Historical Society. Unseen. 7 - Crosby plate. (Same as #9) 8 - Noted Eastern Collection. This is the Anton-Partrick piece, sold by Heritage (April 2021: 3025) as NGC EF-40 for $45,600. 9 - F.C.C. Boyd estate. This was Ford II:310, ex Parmelee and Crosby Plate. (Same as #7) In addition to those eight specimens, the primary Syd Martin example wasn't on the list (despite selling earlier in Stack's J.E. Stiles Collection sale the same decade as Norweb). Also missing was the very nice example Heritage sold in November 2017 (lot 16606) as PCGS EF-45, two fairly rough/corroded examples sold by Heritage in 2003 and 2014 (the first raw and the second NGC VF-25), and the specimen sold in our Spring 2024 Auction, lot 3104, which was earlier in Heritage's April 2020 CSNS Signature Auction. The mention of an example from the Eliasberg Collection in the Ford catalog was a red herring; Eliasberg's was a different variety. On their merits taken as a whole, we would probably rank the Roper-Dittmer coin best, followed by Ford's and the primary Syd Martin coin on the next tier, then three other pretty nice ones (Garrett, Anton-Partrick, Heritage 11-2017), then the rest. There appear to be about a dozen or so of these known. The historical importance of this issue is linked to the moment in the spring of 1787 when New York was considering a coinage of their own. There are not enough for this to have ever been a large scale production, intended to earn profits by circulating coppers of good weight. As a pattern issue, intended to influence the politically connected, the mintage is healthier than normal, indicating a very strong push to win a coinage contract. While the original documents refer to "the several petitions of John Bailey and Ephraim Brasher, relative to the coinage of copper," it is unknown if they issued these coins working together or if their petitions were separate. The George Clinton and Standing Indian coppers are related, but probably the work of a different petitioner: Thomas Machin. Another petition was filed by silversmiths Daniel Van Voorhis and William Coley, a partnership that created dies like those for Ryder-10 and Ryder-11, coined at the Vermont mint. Clearly, most of these coppers were disposed of into circulation rather than being cherished as something extraordinary at the time. Their importance as coins (or patterns) was ephemeral, and their relevance became moot at the time the Constitution reserved the coining prerogative to the Federal government in 1789. Today, they are highly sought after by collectors.
PCGS# 424. NGC ID: B8E3.
From the Sydney F. Martin Collection. Earlier from our (Stack's) sale of the Donald S. Fleishcher Collection of Colonial Coins, September 1979, lot 539; our (Stack's) sale of the Robison Collection, February 1982, lot 153; our (Bowers and Merena's) Collections of Russell J. Logan & Gilbert J. Steinberg, November 2002, lot 172; our (American Numismatic Rarities') Old Colony Collection sale, December 2005, lot 64; John Agre and Dave Wnuck (Coin Rarities Online), September 26, 2009.