NNP

A Newman Portal user this week searched on “Maris 66-v,” using the NNP advanced search page and restricting content type to auctions. The Maris 66-v is a rare New Jersey copper variety, and Newman Portal locates only 48 listings in its database of over 5,000 auction catalogs.  The recent ANS publication on New Jersey coppers (2013, by Roger Siboni, Jack Howes, and A. Buell Ish) describes the popularity of the variety:

“This distinctive coin has long been known among collectors as the ‘Braided Mane’ variety. The horse’s hair flows from the ears all the way down the neck in carefully engraved arcing lines that weave in graceful curves over and under each other. While the mane is gorgeous in its own right, the horse is beautiful as a whole. The name, the delicate engraving, and the slender, tapering muzzle make for a decidedly feminine appearance. A high grade specimen that shows the mane nicely will be a treasured prize in any Colonial coin collection.”

Siboni, Howes, and Ish report no uncirculated examples. An EF coin appeared in the Stack’s Bowers Americana sale of January 2013 (lot 11401) and realized $8,225.

Link to NNP advanced search: https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/AdvancedSearchForm

CARTNEWS, published by the Carolina Token Society, has been digitized by Newman Numismatic Portal and is now online for the period 2004-2016. A recent issue (August 2014) describes a “good for” token of Profile Cotton in Jacksonville, AL, c. 1920, and relates how its proprietor William Ivan Greenleaf was hung in effigy, by a mob incensed with Greenleaf’s labor practices:

“Finally, when the people were mad enough, they went after their tormenter. They fetched Greenleaf from a closet and bore him to Big Spring, to the hanging tree. He didn’t seem to weigh all that much for a big shot, and they slung him from man to man like a rag doll as they cursed, laughed, and hooted. When they slipped the rope over his head the crowd screamed, and women in faded flower-print dresses pushed children behind them, so they could not see. In the glow of a hundred torches, they raised him high, their scarred arms and mutilated fingers his gallows. His face was covered with a toe sack, but they hung a sign around his neck so everyone would know: GREENLEAF. Then they let him drop.”

Newman Portal acknowledges Tony Chibbaro and Don Bailey of the Carolina Token Society for their assistance with this project. 

Link to CARTNEWS on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/526524

A Newman Portal user this week searched for the term “jeton.” This is a term that most readers have seen, but can’t necessarily define. Frey’s Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, 1916) gives the definition “a counter which can be traced in France to the thirteenth century…the name is derived from the verb ‘jeter’ [meaning] to throw, to cast…they were first struck in copper, brass, and other base metals, but at a later period when they were intended as gifts, they were frequently made of silver and gold.” The standard reference today is Jean Lecompte’s Monnaies et Jetons des Colonies français (2000). A typical example is Lecompte-150, as cataloged in Stack’s Bowers 11/2014 sale (lot 3003, realized $235). This piece is dated 1755 and exhibits a bust of Louis XV.

Link to Newman Portal Dictionary: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/dictionary