United States, New England One Shilling, (1652)
- Description
- Produced at John Hull's private mint in Boston. Obverse: Script NE (for New England). Reverse: XII for twelve pence, or one shilling. Boston was founded in 1630. Within two decades, it had become a prosperous, thriving community, engaging in legal trade with the mother country and clandestine trade with Spanish America.
- Perpetually short of coinage, the proper Bostonians came up with an unorthodox idea: they would take a portion of the silver coming in from the south, melt it down, and make coins from it. Their first efforts were modest. They recast the silver, beat it into thin sheets, then cut more-or-less round blanks from it. The blanks were struck with simple designs, once on each side.
- The resulting coins were fairly easy to counterfeit. They were very easy to clip off some of the metal (and a portion of their value would be thereby removed). Embarrassed bureaucrats soon legislated more sophisticated designs that took up all of each side of the coin.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- coin
- Date made
- 1652
- maker
- Massachusetts Bay Colony
- Physical Description
- silver (overall metal)
- 0 (overall die axis)
- 0 (overall die axis measurement)
- struck (overall production method)
- Measurements
- overall: dia. 28 mm; wt. 4.693 g
- place of issue
- United States: Massachusetts
- ID Number
- 1982.0798.0001
- catalog number
- 1982.0798.0001
- accession number
- 1982.0798
- catalog number
- 82.798.01
- subject
- Coins, Currency and Medals
- See more items in
- Political History: National Numismatic Collection
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- Credit Line
- Norweb, Emery May Holden
- Publication title
- Glossary of Coins and Currency Terms
- Publication URL
- http://americanhistory.si.edu/coins/glossary.cfm
- Additional Media
-
Visitor Comments