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Canadian Countermark

Currency:CAD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - Canada Start Price:150.00 CAD Estimated At:300.00 - 350.00 CAD
Canadian Countermark
SOLD
150.00CAD+ buyer's premium (30.00)
This item SOLD at 2016 Sep 29 @ 20:00UTC-4 : AST/EDT


Buyer’s Premiums will be added on all items as per the Terms & Conditions of the sale. Invoices will be emailed out following the Toronto Coin Expo Convention. Visit gbellauctions.com to view a digital copy of the catalogue for this sale.
Canadian Countermark

T.W on obv. of U.S. 50¢, 1827 (M.I. 905).

Duffield lists a T W mark on a tin Continental Dollar, likely not the same mark. This piece is included due to the fact that it was discovered on the banks of the Richelieu River with a small hoard of other American silver coins, and because of the temptation to associate the initials with that of the family of Philemon Wright, the famous lumber baron and “Father of the Ottawa”. Sheldon Carroll, in an article titled The fantastic Philemon Wright counterstamps (CNJ, July, 1968) based on primary documents in the National Archives, described eight marks which he attributed to the Wrights. One of each of these pieces was apparently made for members of the family, and a T W mark he felt represented a son, Tiberius Wright, who, with his two brothers took over the business after Philemon’s death in 1839. Those marks are, however, very different from this one, particularly in the case of the W’s, which were created from a pair of joined V’s. Nor does the geography of the find support the argument that this mark relates to one of the Wrights, as the Richelieu is not in a geographical situation in which the Wrights would have been implicated. The lumber transported to Quebec by the Wrights would have traveled via the St. Lawrence waterway. It is not likely, therefore, that this solitary example of a Canadian found mark has any relationship to the Wrights, and its sole merit for being included is due to it having been found with a group of other similar period silver coins on Canadian soil in a pre-1850 small hoard find. (Marked Impressions).

Note: this lot is part of The Richard Cooper Collection.