The first silver coin minted in the early days of the US has finally been authenticated

OLD INNS along the Revolutionary War trails boast of George Washington sleeping there. But coin experts say they have found the first silver piece minted by the US – one likely held by the most en vogue of Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton.

David McCarthy figured the silver coin had to be one-of-a-kind after spotting it in the auction catalogue.

Its front features the all-seeing eye of God, surrounded by rays of light. The rays shoot out toward 13 stars – one for each of the colonies that had rebelled against Great Britain.

A similar coin bore two words in Latin above the starburst: “Nova Constellatio,” or “new constellation” to describe the infant US. But this silver piece bore no inscription at all. It was the first clue that the coin was something singular, said McCarthy, a senior researcher for the coin and collectibles firm Kagin’s.

He had a hunch it was the first coin ever minted by the US government in 1783 – the prototype for a plan discussed by both Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson that arguably shaped the course of the nation.

McCarthy staked his company’s money to buy the coin for $1.18 million (R15.6m) at the 2013 auction. After nearly four years of late nights sifting through the papers of the Founding Fathers and studying the beading on the coin’s edges, he is now making an exhaustive case that this silver piece is indeed the first American coin, the precursor of what ultimately would circulate a decade later as the US dollar.

The coin is on display this week at the World’s Fair of Money in Denver.

“You’ve used the progeny of this one coin in every transaction you’ve done in your life, whether it’s a bitcoin, a dollar or a euro,” McCarthy said.”

McCarthy published the details of his findings in the August issue of the coin journal, The Numismatist, as well as in a post on Medium.

He vetted and refined his findings over the years with other top experts such as John Dannreuther, a rare coin dealer who found identifying marks on another coin that indicates that it had to have been struck days or even weeks later from the same steel dies. – AP