NEWMAN PORTAL: BENT COIN SUPERSTITION

   

Numismatic Superstition

Bent coins convey various meanings throughout history, with one idea being that ruining a coin symbolizes a sacrifice intended to win favor with fate. Sydney Noe wrote in The Pine Tree Coinage of Massachusetts (1952) We are told that it was the superstitious belief of the time that wearing a bent coin afforded protection against the power of ‘witches.' Some of our Pine Tree coins show evidence of having once been bent even though as we see them now they have again been flattened. Superstition seems to run in inverse proportion to valuation, and it's a safe bet that no one today is deliberately bending Massachusetts silver coins. Illustrated here is such a piece from the ANS collection, donated in 1946, and likely one that Noe had in mind when writing the 1952 volume on Massachusetts silver.

Image: bent Pine Tree Shilling from the American Numismatic Society collection, 1946.89.51, digitization sponsored by Syd Martin and Roger Siboni

Link to The Pine Tree Coinage of Massachusetts on Newman Portal:
https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/512405

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
QUERY: EARLIEST USE OF TERM 'WITCH PIECE' SOUGHT (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n12a18.html)
NEW BOOK: BENT, HOLED, & FOLDED (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n41a03.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web