Seated Liberty half-dime collector Stephen Crain approached TAMS member Paul Cunnigham with a question he addressed to many dealers, "Do you know what my encased half dime might be? Have you ever seen one before?" Paul introduced Stephen to the TAMS Journal editors, Bill Hyder and FredHolabird. Now, the conversation proceeded anew.

When Stephen first began his quest, he had five odd Seated Liberty half dimes encased in a heavy metal that he believed to be zinc. After showing them to a number of dealers and inquiring as to what they might be, he still had no answers. However, he acquired four additional examples of the odditems.

Stephen published his collection of these oddities in the Fall 2014 issue of The Gobrecht Journal, published by the Liberty Seated Collectors Club. With no answers forthcoming by Fall 2015, the journal editor granted permission for TAMS to adapt the article to widen the net in search of answers. Fredbelieved the answer could likely be found in a tantalizing letter to a newspaper editor that Crain cited in his article. The letter commented on an 1849 lecture delivered in the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. The writer mentioned a "half dime set in zinc" placed in a person's hand. Fred'sinterest in the Gold Rush era attracted his attention to a statement in the letter that gold instead of silver might serve the purpose of "allaying the California fever."

Bill Hyder adds:

The letter appeared in the Frederic Douglass' Paper on October 19, 1849, and it reported on the writer's observations at a lecture held in the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Corinthian Hall hosted political lectures, anti-slavery lectures, séances, and lecturers on the latest healing fads.

The letter, dated October 10, mentions that the lecture dealt with the influence of mind upon mind. The demonstrations involved placing a half-dime set in zinc in the hands of the volunteer subjects. With a lucky Google search, we learnedthat it was the Rev. John Bovee Dods who arrived in Rochester in early October to lecture on and demonstrate the power of Electrical Psychology (his own branch of mesmerism or hypnotism) to cure disease.

The diameters of the encased half dimes collected by Stephen vary in size from a maximum of 29.83 mm to a minimum of 26.30 mm. The thickness of the objects also varied greatly; no two the same. They range from a maximum of 11.01 mm to a minimum of 5.27 mm. In other words, they fit comfortably in the palm of the hand as we all can attest after handling the nine examplespresented to us. Two of them appear to have a copper core, another appears to have a silver core, but none have been tested. They certainly seem to fit the description of the half dimes mentioned in the letter to the newspaper.

So how does Dods' electrical psychology relate to the zinc encased half dimes?

The discovery of electricity and galvanism allowed Dods to move beyond simple hypnosis. Dods describes his healing practice in his lectures presented to the U.S. Congress that were published as The Philosophy of Mesmerism and Electrical Psychology (various printings and publishers from the 1840s to the 1880s, modern reprints are still available):

Dods continues on to describe how the subject must remain motionless, staring at the coin for 20 or 25 minutes. Most subjects will now be in the psychological state of inestimable blessing.

The galvanic reaction between zinc and silver was well known in the 1830s. One test recommended to identify counterfeit silver coins involved placing a clean strip of zinc on your tongue and silver half-dime under your tongue. When you closed your mouth and brought pressure on the two items, a distinctive taste would be detected owing to the galvanic response. If youthen replaced the known silver coin with the suspect coin, you would know it was counterfeit if no taste was detected.

What we do know about these encased half dimes is that someone was making the "electro-magnetic coins" for Dods and other practioners. Dods himself must have sold them to his students as he trained them in his philosophy and practice. However, we have not found any advertisements or other printed matter that mention or picture the "coins."

And what about the reference to gold and the Gold Rush? By October 1849, the lure of gold had many men leaving their jobs and families in search of making their fortune. We propose that the letter writer was drawing analogy between subjects being mesmerized by the shiny surface of the silver coin and the fever of shiny gold wealth that had mesmerized the nation. We leave it to the reader to decide if the evidence presented here has solved the mystery of the encased half dimes.

For more information on LSCC and TAMS, see:
www.lsccweb.org
www.tokenandmedal.org

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
SELECTIONS FROM PRESIDENTIAL AUCTION 86 : Lot 30: Richardson's Battery(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n31a20.html)