1786 New Jersey Copper, Narrow Shield, PCGS VF25, CAC. Tan devices on a dark chocolate background characterize this 1786 Narrow Shield New Jersey Copper. The colors confirm the coins originality. The surfaces are clean for the grade with no individual abrasion marks worthy of note. All of the devices are well detailed and well centered. The CAC sticker indicates that the coin is a premium quality piece and fully merits the assigned grade.

The coin shows a horses head above a plough. No sprigs are under the head, and the beam is straight. The obverse inscription is NOVA CAESAREA or New Jersey with the date below. The reverse shows a Union shield with the motto E PLUIRBUS UNUM separated by six-pointed stars. Dentils are around the peripheries of both sides.

New Jersey was founded in 1664 by a Royal Charter and was sometimes called Nova Caesarea. Shillings of Massachusetts and Spanish coins were used in its early days along with English Shillings, which were the primary small change used in the colony. There was much light weight imitation coinage in circulation. In 1787 the governing Council passed a measure that punished those who passed light weight coinage by forfeiting ten times their normal value. 

The State of New Jersey established coinage in 1786 by allowing Walter Mould, Thomas Goadsby and Albion Cox, later the first Assayer at the United States Mint, to mint copper coins. The coins had to be 126 grains minimum weight. These men continued to produce this coinage together and then separately until 1788. When the Constitution was adopted in 1789, New Jersey stopped making coins.

In its population report, PCGS shows only the present coin at the VF25 grade level.