#105-CIVIL WAR SALE: TONED GEM BU+TOKEN SANITARY COMMISSION/GREAT CENTRAL FAIR

I will always offer as many details regarding CW tokens, frankly much more than you will find from most sellers. Unless you are quite familiar with this specific token from the 1864 Philadelphia Sanitary Fair you would not realize that this is an anomaly. this token is notoriously weakly struck on the reverse, typically with some letters very light and this one is dramatically different. The strike on both obverse and reverse look very much like a proof strike.

Those who do not know me or The History Bank well might question the veracity of some of my comments....and go so far as to wonder if they are just seller BS. I always share my candid opinions, including on items I am selling, positive or not so much! I preface with this because this example of the Great Central Fair token is far and away the best strike I've ever seen.

I remain surprised at this specific example of this token and each time I look at it I wonder how and why this one stands out so dramatically. My first assumption is that perhaps as the fair went on, there was concern that the die(s) were beginning to show wear; perhaps a new one was provided but ultimately it was only used a few times, thus resulting in this and I assume a very small number with super strikes.

These were struck onsite by the U.S. Mint so you should see more uniformity and quality than with many (or most) CWT's. This seems to lend creedence to the thought that perhaps the initial reverse die was weak in some places and by the time a new one was provided the fair was about over and thus very few were struck.

Certainly, I haven't seen thousands of this or the silver version; but I have probably seen nearly 100 I would estimate. I began studying Sanitary Fairs in the 1980s as I was writing multiple Civil War histories. At one point I managed to assemble a small collection of tickets and passes--extremely rare. I purchased every one I found in the 1980's and '90's--about a dozen in total. My customers never saw them offered for sale as I consigned the collection to Heritage which sold them for what I had had felt was a reasonable price of about $600-$800 each.

As one last aside, you see silver examples of this token far less frequently than the copper. I am quite sure that the silver ones were sold in a very small number compared to the copper ones. Silver tokens were sold for 50 cents, 5 times the price of the copper. I have owned/sold fewer than 10 silver tokens over the years.

More than enough said--but this is simply the finest copper example from the Philadelphia fair I've owned or seen.