1787 Fugio 1C New Haven Restrike, Copper, RB MS(PCGS#917)

February 2025 Showcase Auction - U.S. Coins

拍卖行

Stack's Bowers

批号

1001

等级

MS65RB

价格

24,437

详细说明

Certified as being struck in copper by PCGS, although all examples are really in yellow bronze, the variations in color due to different striking periods or, more likely, sightly different allows. This is a beautiful Gem with much vivid orange-rose color especially around the peripheries. Light gray-brown toning appears to drift toward the centers, and wisps of salmon-pink iridescence engaging the label on the reverse and portions of the sundial on the obverse. Sharply defined, as befits the type, with exceptional quality and eye appeal.<p>According to numismatic lore, in 1858 C. Wyllys Betts discovered three sets of 1787-dated Fugio cent dies on the site of the Broome & Platt store in New Haven. Betts' discovery was supposedly made while rendering services to coin dealer Horatio N. Rust who, circa 1860, had Fugio cents struck in copper alloy, silver and gold from these dies. These coins have come to be known as the "New Haven Restrikes." Modern numismatic scholarship has proved that very little of the foregoing is actually true. But the increased popularity of coin collecting in the 1850s made it profitable to produce and sell reproductions of the Fugio cents. The firm primarily responsible appears to be the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut, which used newly created dies to strike these coins. Horatio Rust still seems to have been involved, but only as a distributor or, perhaps, the person who commissioned Scovill to create the dies and/or coins. The "New Haven Restrikes" differ in detail from original Fugio cents, particularly on the reverse where the rings are narrow instead of wide. Most examples of this type are struck in brass or other copper alloy, as above, although rarer silver and gold impressions are also known.