Johnston2 Posted May 13, 2019 Share Posted May 13, 2019 Found this gem on Ebay. Was ready to shell out 111.11 dollars (that was my bid) but Ebay happily accepted 66 dollars since nobody bid higher than that. It is one of the first coins Bernard von NotHaus ever struck with a hydraulic press back in his cabin-in-the-woods days. What is extremely significant is that it is has the same obverse design as the 1998 Shelter Dollar. This is a HUGE win. What was great about the listing for me was it used the inverse as the main picture and did not use Bernard's name nor did it use the word NORFED which people commonly use to facilitate successful searches. The auction also ended in the middle of the night. I am going to contact Bernard's former associate, mintmaster Telle Presley to get packaging for the item, a CoA, and possibly mintage information. What she had told me on the phone is, "I may not have the information as we weren't the experienced minters we are today." My educated guess is between four to two-dozen. Big difference in price there. Two dozen means it is worth 500 to the proper collector and four.. gauging by how many collectors there are.. means it's a 2000 dollar item. It's a niche market. Hooray for me! Size is 21mm and it is probably sterling as Bernard never used nickel for these. Crawtomatic 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnston2 Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 (edited) Update: 2014 copper piedforts of the 12 original 76-79 coin dies are available on the royalhawaiianmint website. The mintage on the piedforts is 40. The piedforts indicate that the original 12 of Bernard's dies were for a Hawaiian currency system consisting of the following gold denominations: 5gr au 2.5gr au 1gr au 0.25gr au 0.1gr au 0.01gr au Mixed with copper. The 0.25gr au coins used the shelter systems inverse and had a mintage of.. 4? Bernard matched the Kamehameha I inverse and the Shelter Systems inverse at one point? The guy still gets NORFED paper money orders, you can send mail for them, and he's the one who gets back to you. The plan is to stick it in a 20mm lighthouse quickslab (it's slightly smaller than a nickel but much larger than a penny) and then have him write the label himself when I mail these NORFED certificates in sometime before they expire in November. He's a busy guy. I'm pretty much going to do the numismatic documentation/archival stuff by hand considering the subject matter and how the fella got charged with counterfeiting. The hand written label should make it the lack of professional authentication sufficient for the distant future. More pictures! One thing you should note is Mr. NotHaus' early mintmark- a n inside of a star. I'll be bump the thread as I find information and if I get my slab label written. I've been a collector for a while and have never been part of something "numismatically significant." I am excited to be writing this one down for the historical society. Edited May 16, 2019 by Johnston2 Crawtomatic 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnston2 Posted May 17, 2019 Author Share Posted May 17, 2019 (edited) Fitted the 21mm item into a 21.5mm nickel slab using a bit of rubber. Going to send a 4oz Liberty Dollar order Bernard's way and see what he can do for a label. Edited May 17, 2019 by Johnston2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
