Important British and World Coins including Important Irish Coins from a Private Collection (Part II)

Colonial, Maryland, Annapolis, John Chalmers, Shilling, 1783, short worm (Crosby pl.ix, 5; Breen 1011; Durst 42). Grey tone, fine, rare (£1,000-1,200)

Provenance:
From an old British Collection.

Sold with an old handwritten note, ‘Passes current in Maryland by consent – not lawful currency’.

John Chalmers (†1817), a goldsmith and silversmith who had served as a captain in the Continental Army and who was on the Common Council of Annapolis, had his own coins, from dies prepared by a fellowsmith silversmith, Thomas Sparrow, struck at a building at the corner of Fleet and Cornhill streets. The design, of two hands shaken in friendship and two birds fighting over a worm while a snake lays in wait behind a hedge ready to attack them, was interpreted as a didactic warning for newly independent states not to fight among themselves lest they be swallowed by the snake representing the federal government