Rare 1936 Canadian ‘dot cent’ set to sell at U.S. auction for pretty penny: $250,000

The penny was one of just three known to have been created by the Royal Canadian Mint at a time when the nation’s coin-makers were scrambling to prevent a shortage of properly stamped coppers. The crisis loomed at the end of a tumultuous year for coin engravers, during which George V died and his son, Edward VIII, became king for only a brief reign before abdicating in favour of his younger brother, George VI.

Between the time Edward VIII gave up the throne in December 1936 (to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson) and George VI was formally crowned in May 1937, nervous Canadian officials — lacking a profile portrait of the unexpected new king to stamp on the country’s coinage — prepared for a stopgap re-minting of the old George V design.

To distinguish any new batch of coins that might have been required from the earlier production runs of 1936 George V pennies, a tiny dot was added by mint technicians in the space beneath the “1936” date of the posthumous prototypes, believed to have been made in early 1937.

Some experts believe that the potential coin shortage never materialized, so that just three “dot cent” samples were produced, along with limited numbers of similarly marked dimes and quarters. Others suspect thousands of the dimpled pennies were actually minted but later melted down for the first run of George VI one-cent pieces, dated 1937.

Either way, two of the three documented 1936 “dot cent” specimens wound up in the hands of retired Royal Canadian Mint employee Maurice LaFortune of Ottawa. And by the early 1960s, that pair of pennies — as well as the third one, once owned by the widow of another mint employee from Ottawa — had been acquired for a few hundred dollars each by the legendary Rochester, N.Y., coin collector John Jay Pittman.

Before his death in 1996, Pittman would assemble a treasure of numismatic rarities worth $30 million, with the three dotted pennies from Canada among his most prized possessions.

The third of the three — and the one to be sold next month by Texas-based Heritage Auctions at its “World and Ancient Coins” sale in Chicago — has had a particularly intriguing history, having been snatched by thieves from Pittman’s home in 1964 along with a number of other valuable items.

Then, inexplicably, the New York collector received an unsigned envelope containing — along with a few of his other stolen coins — the dotted 1936 penny with a slight scratch on the “3” of the date.

“This is far and away the most famous of the ‘dot cents,’ being the one stolen from the Pittman home in 1964 and later returned,” states the catalog entry for the upcoming sale. “We are pleased to offer this wonderful piece of Canadian numismatic history. The current owner has known the pride of having this legendary coin for over nine years, and now it’s time for a new chapter to be written in the story.”

Not even Canada’s national coin collection has one of the “dot cent” pennies struck nearly 80 years ago — though it counts among its holdings examples of the dotted dimes and quarters from 1936, both of which are more plentiful and less valuable than the dimpled, maple leaf-emblazoned once-cent coin from that year.

The scheduled sale of the artifact has already created a buzz in North American collecting circles, with the publication Coin World recently celebrating the specimen as a jewel that “combines pedigree, rarity and mystery, and remains a numismatic enigma.”

Even if the penny sells for more than expected, it’s unlikely to surpass the all-time record price for a historic Canadian coin. A 1911 Canadian silver dollar — one of only three known to exist — was sold to a Canadian collector in 2003 for $1.1 million.

rboswell@postmedia.com; twitter.com/randyboswell