 1652 Massachusetts Bay Colony. Pine Tree Shilling. Small Planchet. N.27, Cr.18-Q, W.55. R-6+. 68.7 gns. Choice Fine. The Noe Plate Coin. The Wurtzbach Plate Coin. A high grade specimen of this very scarce variety. The cataloguer has records of only eight of these, the best being an EF in a New England collection and the Choice piece shown by Joe Lasser at the 1991 ANS COAC exhibition. This piece is as good as anything that has been on the public market since the 1970 MHS sale piece that graded Fine. The obverse and reverse are pale silver gray with some tantalizing hints of light blue iridescence principally on the reverse. On the front the tree is somewhat soft on its trunk but the letters in the legend are fully legible save for the right descender of the last which is obscured by a rim break. The die breaks which have formed in the upper right tree branches and along the lower left ground line are here somewhat advanced and there is a break running from the inner beaded border to the rim between HV.
On the reverse the denomination and date are bold as is the inner beaded circle but the letters of the legend around are quite soft and jumbled due to the extreme clashing the die has suffered. Described by Carl Wurtzbach on his collector's ticket as ''Excessively rare, but 2 known. Crosby good to Whitman. This one Dr. Hall to Brand to Wurtzbach. None in Bushnell-Parmelee-Mills-DeWitt Smith-Earle, etc.''
Ex Thomas Hall, Virgil Brand, Carl Wurtzbach, T. James Clarke, F.C.C. Boyd Collections.
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