"1652" Twopence Oak Tree - Copper Wyatt Copy

Coin Details

Description

A copper copy of the Massachusetts Oak Tree Twopence made by Thomas Wyatt of New York. Thomas Wyatt, a New York numismatist, had copies of Massachusetts silver coins made about 1856; that year a Boston paper traced a run of newly "discovered" coins to New York, and the collector Jeremiah Colburn named a New Yorker with the initials T.W. as their source. According to the Stack's Bowers description, the first strikings were in silver, about a dozen of each type, sold in eight-piece sets (NE shilling and sixpence, Oak Tree shilling and twopence, Pine Tree sixpence, threepence and penny, and a Good Samaritan shilling); the copper strikings came later, after Edwin Bishop of New York acquired the dies. Noe illustrated these copies in his studies of the Massachusetts silver coinage and gave them letters or numbers of their own. This example is struck in copper. The genuine coin it imitates is listed in the catalog as 1662 Twopence Oak Tree.