(1790) Albany Church Penny - No D

Coin Details

Auction Record

$38,400 • XF40 • 11-01-2017 • Heritage Auctions

Description

Issued circa 1790 by the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, New York, this uniface copper token bears the inscription "CHURCH PENNY" in two lines without the "D" denomination marker that appears on the alternate variety. Cataloged as Breen 1169 and W-8495, with PCGS CoinFacts listing under #612, it is one of the more unusual American colonial-era tokens — a church-issued piece of small change produced to facilitate charitable contributions and local transactions at a time when official small-denomination coinage was virtually nonexistent. The reverse is intentionally blank, making this a uniface striking that required only a single die. Approximately 1,000 total Albany Church pennies were minted across both the "D" and "No D" varieties, but fewer than 10 examples of the No D variant are known to survive, placing it among the significant rarities of early American numismatics. The First Presbyterian Church of Albany, organized in 1763 as the oldest Presbyterian congregation in the city, presumably commissioned these tokens to serve as standardized units for collection plates or parish commerce, similar to communion tokens used in Scottish and Dutch Reformed churches throughout the colonial period. The absence of the "D" (denarius, the traditional abbreviation for penny) on this variety may represent either a different die or an earlier production run before the denomination marker was added. The extreme scarcity of No D specimens — fewer than 10 known from an original mintage of perhaps 500 — makes this a prize for specialists in early American church tokens and private regional issues.