When Stack’s Bowers Galleries offered the E Pluribus Unum Collection of New Jersey Coppers at the official auction of our Baltimore Winter Expo, it gave numismatists an unusual chance to take a look at a meticulous collection from a collector who focused on the series.
Coin Week offers a striking overview of the collection:
New Jersey coppers, like most issues of the time, were struck by private entities under contract to a state legislature, and these entities and their directors were susceptible to the same temptations present in any profit-focused venture. Many known varieties are thought to have likely been struck either by authorized parties outside the quantitative or temporal bounds of the contract or by other persons altogether. The dearth of small change in circulation created sufficient demand for all of these, and most would have been gladly accepted in colonial commerce alongside their “official” cousins.