In the beginning months of the Civil War, most Northern Americans thought that hostilities would last only a short while. By late 1861 that perception had changed and Americans (both Yankees and Rebels) began to hoard what little coins were still circulating due to the uncertainty that prevailed.
As you can imagine, the hoarding of coinage, all coinage, not just silver and gold, caused a great deal of hardships for citizens trying to conduct business on a daily basis. If a merchant was lucky to have a customer with money, whether hard or paper, making change could prove to be a difficult task. So as Americans do, they improvised. Private tokens, commercial script, virtually anything would and did serve as a medium of exchange. Of course that included U.S. postage stamps. In the beginning the stamps were used “in the raw”. That is a 5 cent stamp would be given as change when there was a need for 5 cents. That worked for a while, but eventually the stamps became tattered and abused. Then came little envelopes to put the stamps in. Merchants would produce an envelope, with their business names on it, place stamps inside it and then give it out as change. Again, this worked for a while until the envelope and stamps became un-usable. Then came the “encased postage stamp” produced by J. Gault late in the summer of 1862. Mr. Gault would make a small metal jacket, round like a coin, and insert a postage stamp in it. On some of them he advertised local merchants who paid for this service. Unfortunately this idea was short lived because at this time the U. S. government had decided to jump on the bandwagon and produce “Postage currency”. These were notes, smaller in size than the regular currency that bore the image of the various stamps currently in circulation.
Sounds good so far, right? Well there was a problem. These “Postage Currency” notes were “Exchangeable for United States Notes by any Assistant Treasurer or designated U. S. Depositary in sums not less than five dollars. Receivable in payment of all dues to the United States less than five dollars.” Huh? They were paper money! Exchangeable for hard money! Gold! Silver!
Well that wasn’t going to help the problem much, only create another one when the public went to redeem them. And that brings us to this little “GEM”. Essentially a pattern for a coin that would eventually be paid out in exchange for “Postage Currency”, but you couldn’t give out 10 cents of silver for a 10 cent postage note because the public would just hoard the coins perpetuating the situation. Government and mint employees came up with the idea of striking a 10 cent coin with less than 10 cents worth of silver in it. Patterns were made in various metals, from aluminum, copper, and silver to name a few. And this is one of them.
A great little coin, with an incredible story leading up to its creation. Numismatic Americana at its best!
PCGS Cert #06627513
PCGS / NGC Population: 1/0 Higher 0/1
Priced at: $5,800.00
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