1799 Draped Bust Dollar - 9/8 15 Reverse Stars, Brunk C-1124 I. Culnan

Coin Details

Description

This is the 1799/8 overdate variety of the 1799 Draped Bust Dollar. Dies were expensive, and a serviceable die left over at the end of a year was often kept and re-dated rather than destroyed: the new digits were punched directly over the old ones. The earlier date survives underneath wherever its strokes fall outside the digits punched over it, which is why an overdate is read from the shapes that do not belong to the date as printed. The effect is in the die, so every coin struck from it carries the same remnant in the same position. This 1799 Draped Bust Dollar - 9/8 15 Reverse Stars bears a merchant counterstamp attributed to I. Culnan, cataloged as Brunk C-1124. Counterstamps were applied to circulating coins by merchants, silversmiths, and tradesmen as a form of portable advertising — the business card of early America. Many merchants used coin counterstamping to advertise their trade. The host coin is a 1799 dollar from the Draped Bust Dollars 1795-1804 series. The Mint reported 423,515 dollars for calendar year 1799. Struck in 89.2% silver, 10.8% copper. Cataloged as PCGS #958347. Counterstamped coins documented in Gregory G. Brunk's "American and Canadian Countermarked Coins" sit at the intersection of numismatics and Americana — each piece is a primary-source historical document of early American commerce.