New England CoinageStruck 1652

This is "America's First Coin!" The first American coin design struck by John Hull and Robert Sanderson in Boston, about July-October 1652.

Noe Census #1 Coin. Noe Plate Coin. Würtzbach Plate Coin. The Official Red Book plate coin, 2007 to and including the current edition.

Extremely rare: To date only 14, including this coin, have been reported of this die variety. Seven of the 14 known presently are in museums. This is one of the finest of 14 known Noe 1-A examples and is the Noe Plate coin. Perhaps 60-70 New England Shillings of all types exist, and 19 are presently in museums around the world.

This variety's rarity can be measured by the fact that the Noe 1-A NE Shilling eluded the collections of Stearns, Garrett, Picker, Hain, Roper, and Norweb, to name a few.

In preparing the coin for auction by New Netherlands in the 1950s, Walter Breen described it as:

"V. Fine or better, and for the coin, Choice. Ex Carl Würtzbach, 1938, at $167.50; illustrated in his published portfolio of plates of Mass. AR coinage as No. 3 (henceforward written W-3). Before Würtzbach, it is traced through Virgil Brand, DeWitt Smith... It is illustrated in the Noe book as well as in Würtzbach."

Provenance: Sterling P. Groves, Waldo Newcomer, DeWitt S. Smith, Virgil Brand, Carl A. Wurtzbach, T.J. Clarke, John J. Ford, Jr., current owner