AKSHCC
1652 NO PELS PINE TREE MASSACHUSETTS 3P

Owner Comments:

The threepence was the smallest denomination in the pine tree series produced by mintmaster John Hull and his partner Robert Sanderson in the period from approximately 1667 to 1682. (There may have been some overlap in the production of the preceding oak tree coinage with these pine tree emissions.) The pine tree motif had surfaced as early as 1629 on the earliest seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later appeared on the flag of New England.
The pine tree threepence comes in four different varieties, that have been assigned the Noe numbers 34, 35, 36, and 37. Noe 34 and 35 feature pellets at the trunk. This means there are 2 "dots", one on each side of the pine tree trunk on the obverse. The coin pictured above is of the variety that has no such pellets. It is unusually well centered, as most were struck on undersized planchets, with one or both sides skewed off center. Hull's agreement with the Massachusetts Bay Colony to mint silver coins expired in mid 1682, and he died in the succeeding year.