John Chalmers Coins

About This Coin

The John Chalmers Coins group of the Post-1776 Private and Regional Issues (1778-1820) series holds the pieces described below. John Chalmers, a goldsmith of Annapolis, Maryland, struck silver shillings, sixpences and threepences dated 1783. Crosby quotes the traveller Johann David Schöpf, who wrote that the goldsmith coined on his own account and took in cut pieces of Spanish dollars in exchange; Crosby found no proof that the government had consented. The common shillings show clasped hands in a wreath and, on the reverse, a serpent above a bar with two doves holding a branch below; the sixpence has a star in a wreath and a cross, and the threepence clasped hands and a branch in a wreath.