Cool Cat

[texasrichard]

One of my favorite Early Commems. With a net mintage of about 28,000. The designer ended up being Charles Keck who also designed the 1915 Pan Pac Gold Dollar.

 

While lots of early commems were plagued with scandals, the "Battle of Bennington" or "Vermont" commem was not. They originally were sold for $1 each and most of them went to folks in Vermont. The funds raised were used to help study the history of Vermont.

 

Being one of the highest relief coins made by the US and the fact that most of the issue went to non-coin collectors; many of the remaining coins have wear or damage to the highest parts of the coin.

 

[wtc911coins]

I will have to agree with you that is one cool cat

[bsshog40]

Very Nice Richard!

[SteveInNebr]

ROAR!!!!

[BillJones]

Actually there was some controversy surrounding the design of this piece. The original design featured a view of the Catamount Tavern where Ethan Allan and the Green Mountain boys got together to socialize and plot strategy. The Fine Arts Commission id not care for the design and kicked it back. In the end they put the “cool cat”, a catamount, on the reverse of the coin to symbolize the original idea. No one really caught on to that concept so the cat didn’t mean much to most people when they saw the reverse of the coin.

 

But I agree. This is good design, and the coins were distributed fairly.

[Conder101]

The original design featured a view of the Catamount Tavern where Ethan Allan and the Green Mountain boys got together to socialize and plot strategy. The Fine Arts Commission id not care for the design and kicked it back.

I wonder if that might have been because the country was officially dry, Prohibition you know, and they didn't feel it would be appropriate to show a tavern on the coin.