Independence Day is coming up, and an article just dropped about something topical I have been working on for the last decade as a part of my day job:

Sounds like a fascinating day job to me. Is that the whole article? I got the "New Constellation" reference in your username from what limited Latin I paid attention to, but had no idea it was reference to an early American coin. 

Aha!
I see the resemblance!
Interesting article... and now I know.

Quote from: edwardofhuncote on July 01, 2026, 03:57:19 PMSounds like a fascinating day job to me. Is that the whole article? I got the "New Constellation" reference in your username from what limited Latin I paid attention to, but had no idea it was reference to an early American coin.

That's the whole article — there have been bunch of others over the last few years, this was just nice to see going into the holiday.

Excellent article. Very nice to see your research recognized, especially at this anniversary. Congratulations.

Thanks! I'd hoped to have it going up for display at a museum, but when Lloyd's put that figure on it, the logistical end of things got a lot more complicated. It's looking like it'll be somewhere interesting by this time next year.

I did some more reading and searching and realized quickly how this was just scratching the surface of a bigger story more-or-less lost. The two coins found in a secret compartment of the Sec. of Congress desk, a hundred years later? Desks with secret compartments!? The copper one in Paris, France? How'd it get there? Jefferson? Adams? Franklin? Why? As a souvenir of a rejected currency?

Fascinating. The Masonic imagery in these coins isn't lost on me either. No question of the intent. It strikes me also, the detail of coinage is not unlike the minutae of vintage guitars. The description of the beading around the edges is a conversation we've had right here in these very pages... but about guitars. Very specific ones.

The copper one shows up first in the historical record on May 15th, 1784, when it was presented to a guy named Samuel Curwen in London. I suspect it was used as a model for the Constellatio Nova coppers, some of which seem to have been struck by a guy named Edward Bridgen, who had been trying to get a coinage contract with the U.S. starting around 1779 with a flurry of letters he wrote to Ben Franklin.

The imagery is courtesy of Francis Hopkinson, an artist, poet, and musician, who is generally accepted as the designer of the U.S. flag (he petitioned Congress to give him a cask of wine for his trouble and was rebuffed). Interestingly, the all-seeing  eye starts being used regularly in Masonic imagery after this coin was struck, although it's hard to know for certain which came first, given the secrecy surrounding the Masons.

I can't imagine holding that thing in my hand and suddenly realizing it was the ancestor of every American Dollar.

I've never been a coin collector beyond just silver dollars, and half-dollars my grandparents gave me, two silver quarters from '43 and '44 I accidentally got in change, along with a silver dime I can't read. It just sounds different when it hits the counter. (what would your mother think when she heard my guineas clink?) I keep them in a display case with a one trillion dollar Zimbabwe note as a lesson in hyperinflation and fiat currency.

This one got me though. Thanks for sharing that!

I've slept with it under my pillow. It's unbelievably cool, but now it has to live in a vault underground, which is probably my fault.