Numismatists Of Wisconsin
 

YN Discovers CWT in Bank roll

by Matthew Malvini

My name is Matthew Malvini. I am a youth coin collector from San Jose, CA and for the past several years, I've been expanding my coin collection by going to my local Wells Fargo bank. About every week, I visit my bank and either purchase whole boxes of nickels or boxes of pennies. Over the years, I've found buffalo nickels, proof coins and even Indian head pennies. This past summer alone, I managed to find 3 Indian head pennies dated 1902, 1896 and 1890. However, my most remarkable and oldest find I've gotten from a bank box occurred in October of last year. I walked into my local Wells Fargo and purchased two boxes of pennies. Before I opened any coin rolls, I checked the ends of each roll for any old wheat pennies, Indians, etc. Well, in one of the rolls I got, I noticed a rather odd-looking coin; it looked like nothing I'd ever seen before. As I looked at it closer, I found out that the coin had a date of "1863" on it.

It turns out that I had found an 1863 Civil War Token from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. (WI-620-P-2a, Wm. L. Williams / Chemist and Druggist / 43 Ferry St / Oshkosh, Wis.) What I found truly amazing about finding something this old was how it made its long trek from Wisconsin to California. Imagine the stories this token can tell! It could've been inside a soldier's pocket as they fought courageously during the Battle of Gettysburg or perhaps our very own President Lincoln had it sitting amongst his other pocket change!

Advertisement, Oshkosh City Directory 1870's

Oshkosh, WI. ca 1860

As for anyone who's thinking of getting into coin collecting, I highly recommend going to local banks and purchasing rolls of coins. You get to learn about America's history through the process and who knows, you might even find something truly remarkable!

I'd like to personally thank two individuals for making my story public in the coin collecting community. A fellow coin collector by the name of Mr. Mike Turrini, and Numismatists of Wisconsin, Now News Editor, Mr. Jeff Reichenberger both helped me find a vast amount of information on my discovery.

Matthew is 18 years old and a member of the Cupertino Coin Club in California.

Sidebar to Matthew’s story:

After sharing this with Civil War Token Society President, and Journal Editor, Susan Trask, she reported to me that there have recently been rolls of cents being offered on eBay with CWTs pictured on the end of the rolls. Many of these CWTs have turned out to be counterfeit. It appears to be another unlawful marketing scheme to get these bogus coins out into the market. So please take this as a ‘Buyer Beware’ alert!

As for Matthew’s coin and discovery. I believe it is legitimate. Judging from the photos he sent me – which you see in this article – and comparing them to my own examples of the Williams CWT, I believe it is genuine, though I am far from a CWT expert. I also have to believe Matthew’s roll is not part of the eBay scam. This is how he further explained it to me: “the roll with the token in it was from a completely sealed penny box; it came from one of the Wells Fargo's coin companies. What I've learned about these box rolls is that they are made by having random cents fed through a machine and then rolled up and placed in sealed boxes. All of the rolls in the penny box were sealed tightly, and none of them looked tampered with.” Great discovery Matthew! Thanks for sharing! Let us in the coin collecting community do everything we can to stop these types of scams and hope they don’t discourage our young collectors from enjoying this great hobby. -Editor




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