Comments on a "Specie Suspension" token ? 0

[RWB]

Members' thoughts.....?

[kbbpll]

I found images of an actual coin from a 2015 auction here https://www.auctionzip.com/auction-lot/1837-1841-Payments-Suspended-Specie-coin_6C44A8D9FE

There are others from auctions. You probably already know that 5/10/1837 was the date during the Panic of 1837 that the New York banks suspended payments of commercial paper in specie, and that there were numerous "hard times" tokens minted privately. It looks like the letter is dated 1900? They say "we know that the US Mint made the coin", but it doesn't look like a mint product to me.

[RWB]

The complete letter.....

[Conder101]

They found a hard times token and don't know what it is.  They asked newspapers and "old people" in the south about it and got no answers (not too surprising as the hard times tokens were probably mostly used in the industrial areas in the North and east coast), they "know" (assume) the piece was struck by the US Mint, which it wasn't, so they ask the Secretary of the Treasury to tell them all about it.

I have to wonder if they got an answer.

[RWB]

Very few letters were not answered, although the utility and accuracy varied. I suspect the reply was something like: "Your piece appears to be a privately made token. It was not struck by the United States Mint."

[Just Bob]

1 hour ago, RWB said:

 I suspect the reply was something like: "Your piece appears to be a privately made token. It was not struck by the United States Mint."

Which is basically the same reply that they would have gotten on this board, unless/until someone spent enough time researching the token to come up with the identification, or someone who knew the answer, like kbbpll or Conder101, came along.

[kbbpll]

2 hours ago, Conder101 said:

They asked newspapers and "old people" in the south

Not just any old people, but "prominent old people". I got a laugh out of that tidbit.

Edited December 30, 2019 by kbbpll

[RWB]

As I've tried to convince the Modern US Mint people, one of the fundamental failings of the "old" mint was not recording and retention of its technology-specific knowledge. They are doing much the same now.

They also do not have a grasp of the factual history of the US Mint. All they preserve are finished press releases and other sanitized pap.

[Conder101]

Well they did get it straight from one of the former Directors that "There is no reason for collectors to have that kind of information."    (or should that be )

Edited January 1, 2020 by Conder101

[RWB]

10 hours ago, Conder101 said:

Well they did get it straight from one of the former Directors that "There is no reason for collectors to have that kind of information."    (or should that be )

Which means that if coin collectors, numismatists, dealers and researchers don't assemble accurate information, and disseminate it among themselves and historians, the truth will be lost. :)

[VKurtB]

Political appointees in this era do not care a whit about history, or truth, or anything other than their personal ability to please their superiors. When I entered government service, I was told I had one basic job - make my elected bosses look good. Anything else would get me fired.

[RWB]

The US Mint's early reasons were security of the coinage from counterfeiting. But they did not keep the information for themselves, internally, either. Today, it's mostly habit.