(1835-8) Token HT-224, New York NY

Coin Details

Description

This New York City token from 1835–38 continues the sequence of NYC merchant pieces from the boom-to-bust transition period. The specific merchant remains unidentified in publicly available references, but the token documents another participant in New York's commercial economy during the most dramatic economic transformation of the early American republic. The Hard Times token era produced more New York City merchant pieces than from any other location, reflecting the city's dominance of American commerce and its role as the epicenter of the financial crisis. New York's banks were the first to suspend specie payments in May 1837, triggering a nationwide chain reaction that spread the panic to every American city and town. The density of New York merchant tokens in the Rulau catalog provides numismatists with an extraordinarily detailed commercial directory of 1830s Manhattan. Each token identifies a specific business, its location, and often its merchandise or services, creating a collective portrait of urban commerce that supplements and sometimes surpasses the information available in contemporary city directories and newspaper advertisements.

Rarity Notes

Scarce. NYC merchant token from 1835-38.

Cross References

Rulau HT-224