This Project features discussions, descriptions and images of the coins and tokens used in Colonial and Confederation America based on examples in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame. Many of the items displayed here were donated from the Robert H. Gore, Jr. Collection with some items purchased through the Gore Numismatic Endowment. Several of the British coins as well as many of the counterfeit British and related North American coppers and some of the Spanish silver, are from a collection of some 2,300 coins anonymously donated to Notre Dame in 1887.
Some items are from other donors as notes in the individual entries.
In December of 1998 James C. Spilman and the Colonial Newsletter Foundation agreed to act as image coordinator. Currently both the Colonial Newsletter Foundation and the Coloinial Coin Collectors Club have offered their photo archives. The topics discussed on this page follow. One can either scroll down or click to a specific topic. Additionally, when viewing the larger size images it is especially enjoyable to examine details of the more intricate designs, as on the reverse of the Pitt token or the obverse of the Vermont landscape coppers.