1901 Lesher Dollar - HK-1019a, W.F. White Mercantile, No Number

Coin Details

Description

This 1901 Lesher piece (HK-1019a) carries the W. F. White Mercantile Co. name without a serial number. Joseph W. Lesher (1838-1918), a mine owner of Victor, Colorado, who had backed William Jennings Bryan's free silver campaigns, issued numbered eight-sided silver pieces in 1900 and 1901. He called them referendum souvenirs: holders were free to accept or refuse them, and the octagonal shape kept them apart from federal coinage (Collectors Universe essay, 2017). They are 950 thousandths silver, the rest copper (same essay; APMEX, search). Collectors number them by Hibler-Kappen's so-called dollar catalogue (HK) and by Farran Zerbe's list (Z), as NGC does. For 1901 Lesher made the pieces smaller, 32 mm and 412.5 grains, the weight of a standard silver dollar, and left a space on the side with the landscape for each merchant who took them to stamp a name and town; the other side cites his trademark and his design patent of April 1901 and the price of one dollar (Collectors Universe essay). The essay lists merchants in Cripple Creek, Denver, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Salida, and one in Nebraska, who took them in lots of 50 to 260. NGC lists it, dated 1901, under Zerbe-14 as the piece with no number. Catalogue numbers: HK-1019a, Zerbe-14. PCGS number 643783.

Cross References

HK-1019a; Zerbe-14