Dealer in Dry Gods, Caspar J. Holthöfer had his own money. Not all of us can claim that for ourselves.
About the "C. J. HOLTHOEFER PENNY" there is a text written by his grandson: "In 1864, during the Civil War, the South or the Rebels ran out of copper metal, which was very important to their cause.
This metal was used to make primers for the old-fashioned rifles they used.
Since there were no copper mines in the south, they sent spies or agents into the northern states with the task of obtaining all the US cents they could get their hands on. The US cents were very large and contained a lot of copper, which they needed. This was so successful that there was a huge shortage of US cents. The penny pieces were very important to business operations here in the North, as many items were sold for one, two or three cents at the time. The businessmen lacked the necessary change. They asked the U.S. government for help and were told that the U.S. Mint would produce copper U.S. cents, but they were very small and the merchant who ordered them had to put his name and business address on the back of the Indian side of the coin. These pennies had to be returned to the mint at the end of the war to be redeemed.
My grandfather was one of those merchants with a large dry goods store in Detroit, Michigan. He had a pretty big business and needed a lot of pennies to work with. At the end of the war, he exchanged them for silver coins. But, one penny was lost and didn't turn up until a hundred years later in a gumball machine in Cincinnati Ohio. A friend of mine found it and sent it to me. This is a GOOD PENNY that has returned to its rightful owner. " Translated with DeepL.com (free version)