#149-CIVIL WAR SALE: OUTSTANDING UNCIRCULATED BRASS CIVIL WAR PATRIOTIC TOKEN

As noted, I spent a great deal of time prior to this sale locating and purchasing about 30 high grade Civil War tokens; I wasn't able to put them all in the sale simply because of room but after this sale is over I will create a list of tokens and other Civil War items which will be brief but will give you a chance to acquire additional inexpensive items, many duplicates or VERY items similar to items in the sale. If interest warrants doing so, I will plan on producing a mailer on Civil War items and and also put items in the store without doing an elaborate and very large sale event.

This is an example--and there are a ton of them!!!-- in CWT's where there is deterioration in the die and where the die isn't anywhere near the quality of coins minted at the U.S. mints. Consider just how many thousands of individual patriotic and storecard CWT's were struck, and that it was very difficult to keep quality control at a high level.

But when you consider that the CWT was likely produced for a small business in perhaps a quantity of 500 tokens and created by a private die sinker, our expectations should be tempered. Often the planchets weren't top notch either. And, since these were produced NOT always as an advertising vehicle, again, you need to examine the circumstances. The proliferation of CWT's was to provide the country with much-needed small change as the war effort took much of the copper and/or bronze that normally would have gone into government coining. Merchants (and die sinkers) saw an opportunity to advertise while helping solve the small change problems of the country. And mosgt merchants in the North would generally accept the privately issued CWT's at the value of a penny.

This token is well struck and the "Army & Navy" side is especially well struck. Again, perspective is important. Private coiners were kept very busy and it would be unrelistic to expect the quality to be anywhere near that of the U.S. mints. The side with 13 stars at the bottom shows a typically light strike in the center (not nearly as weak as many CWT's, however) and two small die cracks resulting in the cuds at the rim directly above the second "E" and the "A" in the word "Federal." And if you examine the token more closely you can see that the die was weakening in multiple places.

Despite pointing out weaknesses, I find this CWT highly desirable. It really checks a lot of the boxes, especially on grade, overall strike and color and brightness.