THE ROMANO-WARSHAW SILVER CONTINENTAL DOLLAR

1776 $1 Continental Dollar, CURENCY, Silver, Newman 1-C, Breen-1091, Hodder 1-A.3, W-8450, R.8, VF35 NGC. CAC. 373.3 grains. Four silver Continental Currency coins are known, and those four coins were struck from two die combinations attributed as Newman 1-C and 3-D. Numismatic author Q. David Bowers identifies these pieces as W-8450 and W-8470 in the Whitman Encyclopedia of Colonial and Early American Coins, 2nd Edition. Two examples are known from each die combination. Each of the silver Continental Currency coins was struck over a Spanish 8 reales coin from the Mexico City Mint.

Our Enigmatic First Dollar Coins
The Continental Currency coins have been the subject of much speculation over the years, with talented numismatists reaching very different conclusions. These disagreements primarily center on the origins of these pieces: were they intended to be coins or medals? If coins, were they authorized or should they be considered private issues? Where were they made and by whom? Ultimately, the evidence we are left to sift is that which we can glean from the coins themselves and the scant literary record.

John Kleeberg, in the December 2018 issue of the Journal of Early American Numismatics, provided an overview of the controversies and the specific areas of disagreement. Kleeberg's own conclusions, which are examined in detail in his article, are summarized here:

The Continental Currency dollars have security edges, which serve no useful purpose on a medal and are hence rarely encountered upon them.
The hand-cut dies stylistically resemble the work of an engraver more than that of a die sinker, and the various idiosyncrasies found upon them reaffirm Eric P. Newman's identification of the engraver as Elisha Gallaudet, working mostly in New York.
If the Continental Currency coinage was produced in New York the summer of 1776, shortly before its capture by the English, virtually the entire issue would have ended up in English hands, explaining why Americans outside of New York were unaware of its existence and why so many of them ended up in England.
A newspaper article exists from June 1776 reporting on plans to establish a 'Continental copper coin' and another from December 1776 reports that large size copper and silver coins have been struck."

Q. David Bowers, in the second edition of his Whitman Encyclopedia of Early American Coins, summarizes the questions raised and theories proposed about these intriguing pieces, and concludes that "it is the present author's opinions that these are coins," while acknowledging that many questions remain unanswered concerning them. However, collectors of early American coins are used to unsolved mysteries surrounding the coins they cherish, and the appeal of the Continental Currency dollars is perhaps stronger now than it has ever been.

Robert L. Rodriguez, owner of the Resolute Americana Continental Dollar Collection, in an email to the cataloger, discusses ground-breaking research involving his two examples, the present piece from the Henry Warshaw Collection (historically known as the Romano specimen), and the fourth that is held in Dan O'Dowd's Tyrant Collection:

The Warshaw Silver Continental Dollar
Robert L. Rodriguez, April 16, 2026

Henry Warshaw's silver Continental Dollar, Newman 1-C, possesses additional prestige as the genesis of the most significant scientific numismatic investigation ever conducted, the six-year Continental Dollar Project. While reviewing the description for lot 24 of the June 1987 Stack's auction of the newly discovered Corrado Romano specimen in January 2020 (now the Warshaw Specimen), I was intrigued by two statements made by the cataloger: "...the present coin is overstruck on a Spanish milled dollar of the type manufactured in many Latin American mints in the 1740's to 1750's..." and, "(The use of Spanish milled dollars as planchets for the silver Continental Dollars was first discovered by John J. Ford, Jr.)"

These assertions shocked and intrigued me. Over the years, Mr. Ford's claim was seen as unreliable and unprovable, but through the application of a new scientific technique to numismatics, we discovered that he was correct. For the first time ever, all four silver Continental Dollars were systematically examined at the Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source synchrotron through the use of X-ray micro-diffraction (µ-XRD). These scans, encompassing 437 hours, took place over a two-year period. We were successful in recovering images of all the undertypes. After five scans totaling 80 hours, we proved that the Warshaw Specimen was struck upon a 1748 Spanish 8 Reales from the Mexico City Mint. Numismatic research is a first for this technique, and Dr. Wenjun Liu of the Argonne is to be congratulated for his scientific success.

These discoveries and others will be explored in my forthcoming book from Whitman Publishing, The Continental Dollar, A Journey of Discovery. As a result of these silver Continental Dollar revelations, the Continental Dollar Project was able to develop new insights and conclusions predicated upon groundbreaking scientific, statistical and observational analyses and reverse engineering studies. Previous Continental Dollar research has centered upon the pewter Continental Dollars since the silver examples have been unavailable for examination. Because of this shortcoming, the alternative views developed from these studies suffer from inadequate information and, in my opinion, are based upon hearsay and speculation.

I will provide an autographed copy of my book to the fortunate new owner of the Warshaw Specimen and look forward to its review by the numismatic community. It is the hope of the research team that included Mark Borckardt, Dr. Robert L. Fagaly, Maureen Levine, and Anthony J. Lopez, that this pioneering study will provide a foundation for new investigations in the field of numismatics.

A portion of the proceeds of the sale will be donated to Washington University where Mr. Warshaw and Eric P. Newman's son, Andy Newman serve as trustees. Washington University is the home of the Eric P. Newman numismatic portal which aims to be the world's largest freely accessible online archive of numismatic information, extending the legacy of Eric P. Newman's decades of scholarly research.