Coin Flatware

Yesterday, while setting the table for our Thanksgiving dinner, I needed a small spoon for the bowl of sour cream. I finally decided on an old, silver spoon that was my mothers and probably her mothers. I polished it as shiny as I could, then, as I was about to set it on the table, I noticed the initial. Tipping the spoon this way and that, I still couldn't decide whether it was a C, a G, or a J. Then I began wondering if it was silver, how much and maybe it would say on the back. Course, me, with my pathetic eyes, I had to haul out my reading glasses and then the magnifying glass. What looked like 100m from one direction turned out to be COIN from the other and a bit farther down the handle it said J. Emery. Of course the next thing anyone does in the age of google was to start searching. What I found, and maybe you already knew about COIN, but I sure as heck didn't, was this..........

In colonial America, silversmiths decided to forge their own silverware and goods to avoid patronizing British purveyors of sterling silver. They collected useless European coins, mainly Spanish reales and melted them down. Because coins were an alloy of metals, their silver content was lower than that of sterling, only 90 percent. America did not adopt the Sterling standard until 1870. Coin silver was made in the United States from the earliest colonial times until just after the Civil War. There were some coin silver manufacturers who continued to produce after the Civil War, but most silversmiths changed to the use of the much more popular sterling silver.

The maker's mark on coin silver usually included the first initial and last name of the silversmith, as well as the city and state of manufacture.

In 1859, silver mines were discovered in Nevada and coin silver dropped out of favor. It was no longer cost prohibitive to acquire sterling silver.

So there ya have it...I hope you learned somthing new today as I did yesterday. Oh...and I never could find anything about J. Emery, the silversmith, but the more I think about the initial, it looks like a J...maybe it was J for J. Emery, or tipped the opposite direction it looks like a C and we did have Campbells in the family.