Awesome Counterfeit: King George II 1/2 Penny Dated 1775!!!

[paleomaxx]

No that's not a typo, the obverse is clearly a King George II left facing bust and the reverse is Britannia with 1775!



I haven't finished cleaning it, and at this point I'm still deciding how best to proceed. This came from a new spot I just discovered today in a field off to the side of a country intersection. It was insanely hot this morning and most of it is locked away under 3 foot weeds, but in under two hours I came up with three colonial coppers and a handful of relics so I was pumped! And very sweaty.

I saw the KGII bust out of the ground, but the reverse was covered in dirt; some tooth picking revealed the date. The obverse was stable at first, but it's drying out and flaking so I may have to tooth pick the front too and pray that it's still detailed.

What a hilariously bad counterfeit though! You have to wonder if even in it's day, it was obvious to anyone who got it that King George II was long dead by 1775 so it had to be a fake. I started looking online, but haven't found any other examples. I was hoping it was a Machin's Mills but it's not in the known die combinations. Could this be something new?

Update:

After much research it seems this is either unique or extremely rare. Online I found only two specific mentions of KGII half pennies dated 1775, one with no accompanying information and the other was a sales listing with photos, but both the obverse and reverse are completely different dies from this example. What I did find were many mentions of a flourishing counterfeit half-penny industry in New York State during the 1780's. In addition to Machin's Mills, there were counterfeit pieces being manufactured in New York City with dies cut by James Atlee.

I also found an article in Coinweek that suggests that Ephraim Brasher (of Brasher Doubloon fame) and John Bailey were involved in the manufacture as well. Because counterfeit operations would manufacture half pennies with multiple dates to lessen suspicion, my hypothesis is that at some point someone in the operation mismatched a pair of dies. The obverse from a fake KGII set and the reverse from a KGIII 1775 set. This may have only gone unnoticed for a handful of strikes before they corrected the mistake which is my there wouldn't be many around.

I checked and neither side of this coin matches the known Machin's Mills dies, but it could easily be from another counterfeiting operation. Hopefully I can dig up some more info, but if anyone recognizes the obverse or reverse from another die set definitely let me know!

 

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[Aureus]

That's a pretty cool coin. Never seen one like this. Congrats!

 

[paleomaxx]

That's a pretty cool coin. Never seen one like this. Congrats!

Thanks! It's definitely a new one for me. I cleaned up the obverse; not a tremendous amount of detail, but the lettering is pretty crisp.



All in all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering the condition of the other two coppers from this spot. Note how close together the "I" and "V" are in "GEORGIVS", hopefully that and the date will be enough to match it to a known die.

 

[A2coins]

Id be happy with that bad boy real or not Sweet find

 

[vpnavy]

Ya did good paleomaxx. Thanks for sharing...

 

[CRUSADER]

Very nice.
More research needed, & or the right specialist. Could well be a first known? Let us know on here!

 

[civilman1]

Britannia doesn't even look real,some spindly old hag more like it! Keep us posted when you find something more. Very cool dig

 

[crossfire631]

Wow that's awesome, nice find! Hopefully you will be able to find out more information. Congratulations!

 

[Silvermonkey]

Great going Paleomaxx. Counterfeit coins like yours are very interesting. Its like a whole sub-catagory of finds unto its self. Very nice!

 

[Digger RJ]

Very Nice!!! Congrats!!!

 

[BTV Digger]

Very nice find and uncommon for sure! For what it's worth it could be a contemporary British Evasion copper. They were quite common in the late 18th century and were made despite the strict counterfeit laws in place at the time in Britain. Most of them remained in Britain, but at least a few made it across to the states. I found one (KG2 style but different from yours) earlier this year and was credited on the Coins of Colonial and Early America web site run by the U. of Notre Dame. They've got a paragraph about evasion coppers on this page toward the bottom with some illustrated examples (https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/CtfBrit.intro.html). However, a quick online search turned up one nearly the same or identical to yours on etsy. If you do a Google search for "George 2 Evasion Copper Etsy" (the link is too long to post here) it's the first link. Let me know what you think - if I had to guess this is probably what it is. Still a very uncommon and neat find here in the USA, but alas not all that rare.

John

 

[paleomaxx]

Very nice find and uncommon for sure! For what it's worth it could be a contemporary British Evasion copper. They were quite common in the late 18th century and were made despite the strict counterfeit laws in place at the time in Britain. Most of them remained in Britain, but at least a few made it across to the states. I found one (KG2 style but different from yours) earlier this year and was credited on the Coins of Colonial and Early America web site run by the U. of Notre Dame. They've got a paragraph about evasion coppers on this page toward the bottom with some illustrated examples (https://coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoin...rit.intro.html). However, a quick online search turned up one nearly the same or identical to yours on etsy. If you do a Google search for "George 2 Evasion Copper Etsy" (the link is too long to post here) it's the first link. Let me know what you think - if I had to guess this is probably what it is. Still a very uncommon and neat find here in the USA, but alas not all that rare.

John

Thank you so much for the info! I did look into evasion pieces when researching this coin, but from my understanding evasion pieces were made to work around a particular loophole in the British counterfeiting law. The law defined a counterfeit copper as an exact copy of regal coinage. As a result counterfeiters started making tokens with some form of bust and seated Britannia (or harp), but with nonsensical or even humorous legends which were obviously not regal. Here are a few examples I found online that I particularly like:



There definitely are some left-facing bust evasion tokens dated 1775, but the closest one (to the regal design) I've seen still has "Georgius" intentionally misspelled as "Georguis."

Maybe a counterfeiter thought they were differentiating it enough by having the obviously incorrect date of 1775, but it was a huge gamble since in 1771 counterfeiting even copper coins became a capital offense. Several sources state that the public readily accepted even the most bizarre evasion coppers due to the shortage of change, so there was no point in making them close to the regal coins and risking imprisonment or worse.

That being said, I did find a bunch of references that said that the change in the British law likely forced many counterfeiting operation to shift gears and make fake half pennies specifically for export to the United States. Since it wasn't as risky, and since the early US was also chronically short of small change, it was probably seen as a safer way to turn a profit.

This dug counterfeit could absolutely be a British made example, but I still haven't been able to nail down any other examples of this die pairing with certainty.

 

[xcopperstax]

Super interesting and nice find. I'm sure you know from the research but counterfeiting silver or gold could be punishable by death back then. Copper counterfeiting wasn't seen as such a grave offense. The Machin's Mills coins are really fascinating to me. I have not found any yet but I know they are out there.

 

[grasshopper]

Very cool find. Hope you get some info on it.

i found an evasion KGIII a few years ago that says George III Rules, definitely one of my favorite unique finds...

 

[paleomaxx]

i found an evasion KGIII a few years ago that says George III Rules, definitely one of my favorite unique finds...

That's an awesome copper, sweet find! The obverse has some fantastic detail.

Even if these were common in Britain, it seems they were not common in the early US. I pulled a paragraph from the University of Notre Dame webpage on evasion coppers:

Newman has explained no evasion copper has ever been found in excavations at an American site nor has one appeared in a colonial coin hoard. Recently, Philip Mossman has concurred in this opinion stating: "there is no evidence that evasive halfpence ever circulated in America nor is there any report of such pieces being recovered in accumulations or hoards from the colonial period." (Money of the American Colonies p. 123). In fact, it would seem reasonable that counterfeiters, under fear of prosecution, would want to send their products out of the country, while there was no such incentive for the export of evasion issues. However, while vast numbers of counterfeit halfpence were being shipped to America, it does seem a small number of evasion coppers also made their way to the colonies. On April 4, 2019 John Goff, a metal detectorist in Vermont, e-mailed and sent me images of a well-worn George II evasion Irish copper dated 1756 with the legend George Ruled that he had uncovered.

The one example he refers to is BTV Digger's copper! Obviously they did exist here between your example, BTV Digger's and I'm sure more detectorists have found them as well. I myself have found an (extremely worn) Irish evasion farthing, but it seems they were far from common if the numismatists aren't convinced they circulated at all.

 

[Trezurehunter]

What a great find. Real or counterfeit, that one should hold a special place in your coin album.

 

[Inspector]

Great thread as well as history lesson, nice looking rare coin & congratulations on the save

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Awesome find!