What The Experts Say...

HT 83A, Low 194A

The date on this token clearly places it in the Hard Times era, yet it has never been published as such. In 1954 Donald M. Miller considered adding it to the HTT listing, as did R.B. White in 1973.

White brought up the possibility of this token having an English origin, and some ecperts seemed to agree. Both pieces have Plain edges.

The Bangs Merwin sale catalog of the Groh collection (Feb. 28-29, 1860) listed HT 83A (copper) as lot 496, showing that in 1859 the Beehive piece was considered by Groh an American token. This was the judgement of the period, and may well mitigate today's opinions.

We received a copy of the Groh catalog for the first time on in early 1997 through the kindness of Q. David Bowers.

Close observation of the die work on HT 83 and 83A led our colleague Wesley S. Cox to determine that these indeed are American Hard Times tokens, the product of the Scovill Manufactoring Co. We quote directly from Cox' written analysis:

"THe case of the letters on HT 83 and HT 83A (the same dies) is the same size as the letters used by the Scovills for "E PLURIBUS UNUM" on their Liberty head dies and the letters on the obverse of the Merchants Exchange die (HT 291)." Cox then offers photographic evidence of enlarged letter examinations of HT 83 and 291. He continues:

"There is one more clue suggesting HT 83A is a Scovill strike. One example I posses was struck on a brass planchet and then chemically plated with copper (electoless plating). Approximately 75 per cent of the Scovill tokens listed by Rulau has copper were struck on brass (planchets) and then copper plated. The study of Hard Times tokens metals is ongoing and very far from complete."

(Rulau 9th Edition)