To Coin a Phrase

Many years ago, when our boys were young, I started a new Christmas tradition.  It includes my sons of course, but it’s my tradition in that I’m the only one who has ever actually put the effort out.  They just reaped the benefits.

With six kids there was never enough money to buy as much as we’d like for them at Christmas, but one year I came up with an idea that could have a lasting impact, that is, if I could get around to it in time for the holiday each year.

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I proposed to do something special for the boys, something of lasting value, something they could hold and look at and remember the good times of their childhoods.  So, I started buying each boy a collectible coin or piece of currency every Christmas that I could afford it.

As the years passed, I included daughters-in-law then grandchildren but my purchases started getting pretty expensive.  No one seemed particularly interested in coin collecting so I eventually backed off a bit and concentrated on the grands.  Hopefully, some of them will be bitten by the numismatic (coin collecting) bug.

Hey, I haven’t given up on the boys or daughters in law.  If any of them ever show renewed interest I have plenty of old change we can go through together.

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There are still lots of coins I’d love to add to my own collection so that keeps me busy searching for them.  While I’m at it I have my eyes open for a good idea of something to buy for the grands.  Two years ago I bought them each a large cent.  U.S. large cents were minted in the early 1800s so the grandkids’ gifts were around 200 years old.

Last July 4 was our country’s 243^rd birthday so I knew it would be tough to find a gift older than those large cents to fulfill my gift-giving goals for the year.  I set my sights on something else.

So, you can imagine how amazed I was when I ran across some coins even older than the large cents.

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Not long after the New Year of 2019 I was doing a search on eBay for Indian head pennies.  I haven’t given the little ones any Indian heads at all for a few years so I thought that was a reasonable choice.  However, during the search, up popped a suggestion for the “New York Penny” which some call “the first American penny”.

What?!  Why had I never heard of that before?

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According to the ad: “The Dutch originally settled New York and New York City, which was then known as New Amsterdam.  The Duit, a copper coin issued by the Dutch East India Company, was one such coin frequently used in circulation as a cent, earning it the title of ‘New York’s First Cent.’  The Dutch negotiated with the Shinnecock Indians to buy the entire Island of Manhattan for the equivalent of a bag of 9,600 Duits!”

Another ad said: “The duit is also referred to as the ‘New York penny’ due to its use as a Colonial monetary unit in Dutch New Amsterdam and for years later, long after Dutch rule had passed. It was part of the coinage used to purchase the island of Manhattan from the locals.”

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Of course, my first thought was that I distinctly remembered being taught that Long Island was purchased from the Native Americans with a bunch of beads, not money.  My second thought was, “I’ve gotta get me some of those!” 

The duits not the beads.

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So, I started checking eBay to get an idea of what a good price for a duit was.  It didn’t take long to find that they were selling for $10 and up…usually.  I bid on a few and eventually won an auction for one a little under that price. 

It took a couple weeks but before too long I checked my mailbox and there it was, an envelope containing one duit.  It was a pretty little thing, round and copper and about the size of a modern U.S. penny.  On one side it was stamped with the rampant lion emblem of the Dutch East India Company and on the other was the VOC monogram that symbolized the United Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).  The wear indicated age and use and the patina was evidence that it may indeed have been salvaged from a shipwreck, as the ad had claimed.

I liked it immediately.

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The purchase also gave me the spark of an idea for an April Fools’ joke I could write up for my readers, so I started researching my coin.  The problem was, as I surfed the net I started finding info that I didn’t like.

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I found that “the duit was a copper Dutch coin worth two penning, with eight duit pieces equal to one stuiver and 160 duit pieces equal to one gulden. In Dutch Indonesia four duit pieces were equal to one stuiver.” 

Whatever that all means. 

I also learned, “To prevent smuggling, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ordered special coins with their monogram embossed upon them. Only those pieces were valid in Indonesia. It was once used in the Americas while under Dutch rule.”

So far so good.

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The duits with the VOC initials “of the Dutch East India Shipping Company in which Henry Hudson was an employee when he discovered Manhattan on September 11, 1609 and explored Main, Cape Cod, and sailed some distance up the Hudson River, which now bears his name.  The Dutch would later claim this area and establish a colony as New Amsterdam.”

Still good.  Still good.

But then the other shoe dropped.

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On a coin collecting site I found that the East India Company “did issue its own coins, but only from 1793, when New Amsterdam was traded (to the British) for what is now Surinam in 1667 (Treaty of Breda).  In fact, there were restrictions preventing the Netherlands from trading in the Americas. 

I found further verification on site after site.  According to them, the chance that Dutch coinage minted at the end of the 1700s would be circulated in New Amsterdam more than 100 years after it became a British colony is ve-e-e-ery slim.

Some writers in the numismatic community came right out and declared that the vast majority of duits being sold with ads indicating some relationship to the “New York Penny”, even the ones that actually were brought up from a shipwreck, most likely never circulated in North America until they were brought in to be sold under, shall we say, “questionable” pretenses, at the beginning of the 21^st Century!

Like mine? 

Yeah, like mine.

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So I wasn’t able to write the post I wanted to originally, but at least I was able to salvage the punch line (be patient).  The only problem was this April Fools’ joke turned out to be on me.

Worse yet, now I can’t even use my favorite excuse when Annie asks me to do something for her.  I can try to say I’ll do it when I get around to it, but she’ll just point to the most recent addition to my coin collection and say, “You already got a round duit.”

Yeah, that was it.

Sorry.

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