Coins Stamped with Advertising: A Forgotten Chapter of Nineteenth Century Midwestern History

Over one hundred years ago in the United States, it was common for merchants to stamp their names and advertising slogans on coins. Probably about five percent of all coins that circulated during the 1850s were so stamped (Brunk, 1990). Many pieces were foreign silver coins, particularly the quarter-size "two reales" or "two bits" minted in the Spanish colonies of the New World. These Spanish American silver coins were American legal tender until 1857,when the government began their withdrawal from circulation. Many Spanish American coins circulating in the United States had struck upon them advertising marks of merchants. Because of the inflation caused by the Civil War, which led the Confederacy, various states, municipalities, local banks and individual merchants to issue paper money, all types of silver coins had a great premium over paper money during the early 1860s. Thus, most of the silver coins stamped with advertising that had not been withdrawn by the government were melted by private individuals during the war. Until recently such pieces have been considered to be "mutilated" coins, and since they had no value to coin collectors, many more were destroyed during the "great silver melt" of the 1970s when the price of silver hit an astronomical value because of the market manipulation of the Hunt brothers. Following the Civil War, merchants again turned to stamping coins, but they now stamped almost exclusively United States coins. All denominations of coins were stamped, including a few gold pieces; but the most commonly utilized coins were half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, "small cents" of the same size as today's pennies, and the old "large cents" that last were minted in 1857. Also used were the now obsolete "two cent piece," "three cent piece," and "half dime," which ceased to be produced during the 1870s. Because of the strong political movement for the free coinage of silver that followed discovery of major silver deposits in the West, the United States Mint produced so many silver coins during the 1870s that it needed to produce few additional pieces for circulation during the 1880s. In fact, so many silver dollars had been struck during the late 1870s that unopened bags of these coins-never having been needed for circulation-were found in the Mint almost one hundred years later, and were distributed to the public during the 1970s through sales handled by the General Accounting Office. This odd historical circumstance of a decline in the production and circulation of newly minted coins by the late 1870s is unfortunate. It is difficult to establish the date of any numismatic attribute, in this case an advertising mark, unless a large number of specimens are extant (Casey, 1986). The chief method of estimating the issue date of merchant advertising stamps is by examining the latest date coin so stamped (see the literature on ancient coins, where this problem has been discussed extensively, e.g., Grunwald, 1946; Thompson, 1954; Kraay, 1962; Buttrey, 1970, Baker 1984; Howgego, 1985). The more specimens of a stamp that are traced, the more certain one can be in estimating its date of issue, but this approach does not work well for American advertising stamps struck after the early 1870sbecause so few later date coin reached general circulation in the succeeding decade. Since we can only date advertising marks stamped upon coins based upon the date of the coins used for stamping, we can state with certainty that advertising coins were extensively used in the United States until the late 1870s, but we are uncertain if the practice was important after this time. Although a few North American advertising marks on coins are known to have been struck up until the First World War, most of the dated later issues are from Canada (Brunk, 1988).