Here are my images, and they are off to NGC for slabbing.
1860 J.N.T. Levick “Smoker" token. Miller NY 428
From the Q. David Bowers Collection; ex John Jay Ford, Jr. Collection; previously ex F.C.C. Boyd.
This token was voted for listing in The 100 Greatest American Medals and Tokens book
Massachusetts. Boston. Henry Cook Medal. Rulau Ma-Bo 19. Copper.
From the Q. David Bowers Collection.
Henry Cook, who would become one of America’s first rare coin dealers, was born in Abington, MA, in 1821, a seventh-generation Mayflower descendant.
He moved to Boston when he was 16 years old and gained employment with a company in the export trade. At the age of 21 he was sent to South America to
handle the firm’s interests on the west coast there. Later he served as mate aboard a sailing vessel which traded along that coast and with islands in the Pacific.
By the 1840s he was an avid coin collector.
In the 1850s he relinquished seafaring for the security of an on-land occupation in Boston, and entered the boot and shoe trade at 74 Friend Street.
He was fond of looking through copper half cents and cents in circulation and picking out scarce dates which he displayed in a counter in his shoe shop.
It seems that he was active in the rare coin business by the mid-1850s.
Circa 1862 he commissioned a selection of patriotic medals to be struck from his own designs, with dies by George H. Lovett.
In 1866, still located in his shoe shop-with-coins at 74 Friend Street, Cook advertised as: “Numismatist and antiquarian.
Rare and antique coins, medals, autographs, books, &c., bought, sold and exchanged.
Cabinets arranged and cataloged for public sale in Boston or New York. Also, purchases made at all the coin and book sales in either of the above mentioned cities, on commission.”
On April 6 of the same year he was elected treasurer at the founding meeting of the New England Numismatic and Archaeological Society.
In 1869 Cook issued a 12-page listing, Coin and Medal Circular, Containing a Few Remarks on the American Series of Coins and Medals. With a Little Brief Advice to the Inexperienced Collector.
1860 Abraham Lincoln No More Slave Territory Medal. Copper, 31mm. By Joseph H. Merriam. DeWitt AL 1860-38, King-576.
From the Q. David Bowers Collection; ex Captain Andrew C. Zabriskie Collection
