At the onset of the Civil War, US pennies were scarce and hoarded as well as metal shortages. People did not like the fractional paper currency, consequently copper tokens were made by private individuals and companies. This not only served as change for the company but also as an advertisement. I have demonstrated a few types of these tokens. Below is the rarity scale and metals scale:

Rarity 1 — 5,000 or more (very common)
Rarity 2 — 2,000 to 4,999 (common)
Rarity 3 — 500 to 1999
Rarity 4 — 200 to 499
Rarity 5 — 76 to 199 (scarce)
Rarity 6 — 20 to 74 (very scarce)
Rarity 7 — 10 to 19 (rare)
Rarity 8 — 5 to 9 (very rare)
Rarity 9 — 2 to 4 (extremely rare)
Rarity 10 – Unique 1 only.

The metals in which Civil War cents are struck and the abbreviations used are as follows:
Code Metal Abbrev Metal
a C Copper
b BR Brass
c N Nickel
d C-N Copper-nickel
e W-M White metal
f S Silver
g L Lead
h R Rubber
i Z Zinc
j G-S German Silver

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Articles, Blog Entry, Coins & Currency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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