Beschreibung:

1847, Hawaii One Cent Plain 4, Small Bust, thirteen berries on reverse. By the mid-1840s, coined money was in both great demand and continual shortage in the Hawaiian Islands. In response to this King Kamehameha III (ruled June 1825 - December 1854) devoted Chapter 4, Section 1 of the legal code of 1846 to the monetary system of the kingdom which was tied directly to that of the United States. This was in obvious anticipation of an eventual issue of coinage for the kingdom since, in addition to prescribing several denominations and their corresponding values relative to U.S. pieces, the code also specified that the portrait of the Monarch and various legends which were to appear on the pieces. One of the coins was to be the "Keneta," a copper coin valued at One Cent. The Hawaiian Treasury was in a constant shortage of funds during this period so the copper cent was seen as an initial "affordable" issue to be followed later by other denominations. James Jackson Jarves, acting as agent for the Hawaiian Government, placed an order for 100,000 of these large copper coins. They were similar in size to U.S. "Large Cents" of the period and their reverse inscription "HAPA HANERI" (actually a misspelling of the proper word "HANELE") translates to "part of a hundred" or presumably "One Cent." Jarves was given a note dated January 14, 1847 in the amount of $869.56 by the Minister of Finance as payment for the order. It is not known precisely where the pieces were minted though the late Walter Breen in his Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins made an assumption that they were produced at the private mint of H.M. & E.I. Richards of Attleboro, Massachusetts. This fact has never been positively verified, however, and the logic he employed to reach his conclusion is questionable. On May 3, 1847 the merchant ship Montreal arrived in Honolulu after a long and arduous sea voyage from Boston via Rio de Janeiro, Cape Horn and Tahiti. The Hawaiian "Cents" were part of the cargo and they were transferred to the Minister of Finance. The coins' exposure to salt air, moisture and humidity accounts for many of them displaying varying degrees of light corrosion and verdigris. Local merchants, who were "against very small transactions," immediately voiced their objections to the coins and the only general usage witnessed was by governors of the outer islands who used them as change when collecting duties and taxes. The last known time of issue for the Cents was in 1862, when 11,595 were still being held in the Treasury vault. Their legal tender status was removed in 1884, and in the following year some 88,000 were shipped out of the country as scrap and melted. The 1847 Hawaiian Cents bear a bust of the king on the obverse surrounded by the legend "KAMEHAMEHA Ill. KA MOl." and the date 1847 below. The reverse has "HAPA HANERI" within a leafy wreath, tied with a bow at bottom, surrounded by" AUPUNI HAWAII." There are two different obverse varieties, the major distinction being that one shows a Plain 4 in the date while the other has a "Crosslet" 4 (with a vertical bar at the right end of the horizontal line). The Plain 4 is commonly known as the "Small Bust" type, while the Crosslet 4 is called the "Large Bust." There are also five separate varieties of reverse dies, with the wreath displaying from 13 to 18 berries. UNC details (NCS).