The core of the so-called “Franklin Hoard” is “proof” $20 gold coins of the United States Assay Office of Gold (USAOG), dated 1853, but the “hoard” also comprises other coins, patterns, and bars, allegedly made by Augustus Humbert as well as the USAOG. They emerged onto the market in the late 1950s.
These coins have been condemned by some of the leading scholars in numismatics - George Fuld, Eric P. Newman, John Dannreuther, Tom DeLorey, J. P. Martin. The American Numismatic Association's authentication service has determined the pieces to be not genuine on two separate occasions, in 1979 and 1994 (DeLorey 1999, Martin 1994). During the controversy of the 1960s, the Professional Numismatists Guild, although not willing to condemn the coins outright, did agree that they were not true proofs, so that any purchaser was entitled to a refund. The coins were not true proofs because the planchets were polished, rather than the dies; true proofs of that period, the PNG held, were produced from polished dies. Hodder has disqualified himself from passing on the authenticity of the USAOG coins: he has written, “I still do not feel confident enough in what I know to condemn or authenticate them” (Hodder 1994; specifically cited by Hodder again, Hodder 1999, 93).
A. Technological Reasons for the Falsity of the USAOG “Franklin Hoard” Coins.
1. Tests by Proton Induced X-Ray Emission Analysis show the Items to be Fake.
In 1997, Hodder and Stack's had proton induced x-ray emission analysis done on two “Franklin Hoard” pieces, plus three unquestioned gold coins. In both instances the PIXE analysis found that the gold fineness of the “Franklin Hoard” pieces differed from the stamped fineness more than the unquestioned pieces did. The maximum variation among the unquestioned pieces was 20 thousandths. A “Franklin” $20 coin was 24 thousandths off, and a “Humbert” $35.80 bar was 58 thousandths off (Hodder 1999, 128: Hodder made a transposition error in reporting the results for the Humbert bar, which must have tested 749 fine - see Stack's 6/1997:1026). The “Franklin Hoard” pieces are both outliers - a strong indication that they are fake. Hodder does not confront this issue in his article, other than to comment that the “Franklin” $20's fineness was “higher than expected” (Hodder 1999, 129) - one of Hodder's typical evasive euphemisms.
When the “Humbert” $35.80 bar was auctioned, the catalog description read, “Humbert was well known for conservatism in valuing gold deposits and in the metal content of his own coins, bending backward not to defraud clients.” (Stack's 6/11/97, lot 1026). Yet the non-destructive testing of 1997 shows that if this bar is genuine, Humbert was one of the greatest rip-off artists in the West. For this bar, though stamped 807 fine, tested at 749. It has 7% less gold than it should. If Humbert issued this bar, he would never have lasted as an assayer. Baldwin & Co. had been run out of San Francisco when their coins were found to be debased by as little as 3% (Adams 1913, xv). People who knew Humbert at the time regarded him as a conservative and reliable assayer - and not a rip-off artist. The rip-off artist was the forger who created these bars in the 1950s. Non-destructive testing shows that there is no way this could have been Humbert's work. Since the incuse numeral punches that counterstamp the bar link with the other controversial coin ingots, and since this bar has been shown to be a forgery, all the controversial coin ingots are forgeries.
2. A repeated pattern of nicks and gashes on the “Franklin Hoard” coins proves that they are forgeries.
When forgers use an existing coin to create a die by the one-to-one transfer method, the new dies bear the pattern of nicks and gashes that occurred on the original coin. Any coin that has been in circulation has a unique pattern of nicks and gashes. When two coins exist that have an identical pattern of nicks and gashes, a forger has been at work, using a worn genuine coin to produce copy dies. This is the case with the USAOG $20 “proofs” of 1853. The giveaway is a depression on the lower part of the second S in STATES. This depression, and others that Martin has listed, prove that the USAOG $20 1853 “proofs” are modern fakes (Martin 1994).
The condemnation of the USAOG $20 1853 “proofs” as fake condemns a family of items, listed, in part, as “controversial coin ingots” (Breen 1988, 616-17). Many of these ingots have the same die as the USAOG $20 1853 “proofs” - the die with the depression on the second S of STATES. Those that do not have this die are linked through reverse dies or through incuse numeral punches. The whole body of material is linked; and since the $20 “proofs” are false, so is the rest of this material.
3. A higher density and a higher reed count prove that the USAOG $20 “Proofs” are fakes; the crude reeding on the round $50 USAOG pieces proves that those pieces are fake too.
The questionable USAOG pieces have a higher density than unquestionably genuine pieces. Furthermore, the questionable USAOG “proofs” have 170 reeds on the edge; genuine USAOG $20 coins of 1853 have 164 reeds (Martin 1994). For the “proofs” to be genuine, the USAOG must have used a special collar to prepare these coins - and none of its other coins. That cannot be.
Equally bizarre are the reeds on the round $50 USAOG piece (Breen 7728); they are large and crude (Van Winkle 1990, Part II, 49). They correspond to no collar known from unquestionably genuine USAOG items, nor to anything used by any branch of the U.S. Mint. The large and crude reeds on the USAOG $50 prove that it must be a forgery; and since it is a forgery, so must all other coins and bars that die link with it.
B. Contradictory design elements prove the falsity of the “Franklin Hoard” USAOG Items.
If we just examine the pieces themselves, we find contradictory elements that confirm they must be false. The twenty dollar pieces have their denomination spelt out - TWENTY. But the fifty dollar and two hundred dollar pieces have the denomination in numerals in incuse punches (Breen 1998, 617, nos. 7728-29). The spacing is poorly arranged: the “D.” for “DOLLARS” is far away from the numerals. These pieces were made from the same dies as the USAOG $20 1853 “proofs,” and the TWENTY was removed; but the forger found it too complicated to prepare identical letter punches for the denominations FIFTY and TWO HUNDRED. So he used numeral punches instead.
This design would have been a step backward for the United States Assay Office of Gold. In 1851 Humbert had issued fifty dollar slugs with “50” in incuse numerals. But Humbert soon switched to raised letters for the denomination. The controversial coin ingots with the denominations “50” and “200” require us to believe that the Assay Office, in its last year of operation, shifted back to a technique that was tried and abandoned two years before.
C. The USAOG did not produce the $50 and $200 Denominations in 1853.
There was no demand for these two denominations in 1853. California wanted $10 and $20 pieces - not $50 and $200 pieces. When Curtis, Perry & Ward (who operated the Assay Office under a government contract) announced that they could coin $10 and $20 pieces to 900 fine as cheaply as the $50 ingots, that put an end to the ungainly “octagons.” As Edward Adams wrote, “The publication of a new tariff by Messrs Curtis, Perry & Ward made the coining of $50 ingots undesirable, and it is not probable that a piece of this denomination was issued bearing date of 1853” (Adams 1913, 49). Kagin agrees: “These new tariffs, as predicted by Curtis, Perry and Ward, effectively put an end to the issuance of the $50 slugs” (Kagin 1981, 154).
There is an even stronger case against the manufacture of $200 pieces in 1853. When Augustus Humbert first set up the assay office, he was authorized to issue pieces in five denominations: $50, $100, $200, $500 and $1000 (Kagin 1981, 145). Humbert issued pieces of $200 and $1000 in February 1851, and then ceased, as shown by a document from the National Archives that Kagin has published (Kagin 1981, 148). We are asked to believe that after two years in which Humbert and his successor, the USAOG, had stopped issuing $200 bars, they would suddenly resume issuing this inconvenient denomination.
Given that all the contemporary evidence indicates that the USAOG did not mint $50 and $200 pieces in 1853, the “Franklin Hoard” pieces of those denominations must be false.
D. None of the “Franklin Hoard” oddities was in Humbert's or Kellogg's collections.
Of one of the controversial Humbert/USAOG pieces, a cataloguer has written, “That this ingot was special in some way to Humbert or his business is also quite obvious” (Stack's 9/1998:1656). One thing we can be sure about is that this bar was not special to Humbert. For Humbert had a coin collection - and we know what it contained. Robert Leonard's research has determined that the Humbert collection comprised two portions (one part corresponding to his assets in New York, and the other to his assets California): one part was auctioned by the Chapmans in May 1902. The other part was sold to Andrew C. Zabriskie, and was auctioned by Henry Chapman in June 1909. Humbert's collection contained many outstanding rarities, such as a proof 1851 gold slug (Garrett:897). The Humbert collection enabled numismatists to determine who issued the coins under the name N. G. & N., for that coin was found with a slip of paper with the words, “From my friends, “Norris”s, Grigg [sic] & Norris” (Adams 1913, 66). The Humbert collection contained the special coins that one would expect to find there. But it did not contain an 1853 USAOG gold proof; it did not contain any of the controversial coin ingots that can be traced back no further than the 1950s. Despite what the cataloguer of the 1998 sale claimed, none of those pieces were special to Humbert - they were not special because they could not be, they had not been made yet.
Another person whom we would expect to receive unusual items from Augustus Humbert would be Humbert's partner of many years, John Glover Kellogg. Here too we know what was in the Kellogg family collection (Kleeberg 2000, 227-29). The Kellogg family had the unusual items we would expect them to have - Kellogg $50 coins, and uncirculated $50 octagonal slugs, even original dies and hubs. But they did not own any of the unusual “Franklin Hoard” Humbert/USAOG items - even though Kellogg and Humbert had been partners. They did not own any of those pieces because in the 1920s another three decades would pass before those oddities were created.
E. If the USAOG made use of proofing pieces, they would have been manufactured in the East, and not on the West Coast.
At least four bars from the “Franklin Hoard” have been described as “proofing pieces.” “Proofing pieces” are ingots of fineness of 998 or 999, which are used to bring up melts to 900 fine. This lessened the amount of nitric acid needed to refine the gold. Nitric acid was scarcer than gold in San Francisco in the 1850s, because it had to be imported from the East, with much difficulty and expense.
But if the San Francisco Mint used proofing pieces to bring up the value of gold melts, it would not have lessened the transportation of nitric acid if it made its own proofing pieces; because it would have to use nitric acid to make them in the first place. The only way to lessen the demand for nitric acid on the west coast would have been to make proofing pieces in eastern mints, and then import them to San Francisco. If proofing pieces survive, they would have been made at New Orleans, Charlotte, Dahlonega, or Philadelphia. Yet this is not the case with the proofing pieces from the “Franklin Hoard.” All of them bear the marks of San Francisco makers: Augustus Humbert or the United States Assay Office of Gold, often both (Stack's 11/1974:182, 183; Rarcoa 8/1978:39; Stack's 9/1998:1656). This makes no sense. These “proofing pieces” must be false.
F. Contradictory stories of the “Franklin Hoard” indicate the pieces must be false.
Like the Mexican gold bars, the USAOG pieces are accompanied by bizarre and contradictory stories of their origin. This is the so-called “Franklin Hoard.”
In 1963 John Ford said that seven gold “proofs” “were obtained from the direct descendant of an associate of Augustus Humbert... Since 1958, we have obtained several semiproof or ‘first-strike’ specimens of the 1853 U.S.A.O.G. 900 fine, $20s, from living relatives and friends of the gentleman with whom we first did business” (Ford 1963).
This version did not last long; the “direct descendant of an associate of Augustus Humbert” was dropped from the later versions. This was a sensible emendation, because it strains credulity that only this unnamed associate of Humbert should have these special proof coins in his collection - when neither Humbert himself nor Kellogg did so.
2. John Ford's story of the discovery of the “Franklin Hoard”: Version II.
Ford amended his account for a submission to the PNG arbitration hearing (Ford 1967, reprinted in Bowers & Ruddy 3/1982 and Bowers 1997, 272). He recounted the second version in an interview in 1990:
In 1956-57 Paul Franklin stumbled into a spectacular find of 1853 United States Assay Office gold coins, alloy essays, patterns, lead trials, proofing pieces and ingots. Practically everything was new and unpublished. There was even a rusted steel die. It all started when, on one of his trips west, Franklin found a bank employee in Arizona who had an Assay Office twenty... Every time Franklin visited the bank, the teller would have two or three additional pieces... It came from a young man who worked behind a window at a bank in Arizona. He was getting the coins from the bank president or vice president, who had been a teller there in 1934, when the stuff was turned in as gold bullion. This guy had apparently kept much of what was turned in twenty-three years earlier, and was now schlepping it out to the young teller, who was his nephew or something. Franklin eventually got from the senior bank officer to an old man[, K. M. Lee], then in his eighties, who lived in Ajo, Arizona, who had the bulk of the hoard. The elderly gentleman did not want his relatives to know what he had or what he contemplated selling. Paul managed to buy for us most of the material during the late winter of 1958 (Van Winkle 1990, Part II, 49).
The first version (1963) and the second version (1967) cannot both be true: in the 1963 story, the “gentleman with whom we first did business” is a “direct descendant of an associate of Augustus Humbert.” In the 1967 version, the first contact is a teller in a bank in the Phoenix area. In the 1963 version, the first contact possesses the coins because they had been passed down from Humbert. In the 1967 version, the first contact possesses the coins because of the 1933 gold turn in order. In the 1963 version, the hoard is obtained from the first contact and his relatives. In the 1967 version, the owner of the hoard does not want his relatives to know what he had or what he contemplated selling.
3. An analysis of the “Franklin Hoard” discovery stories shows that none of the stories can be true.
The second version reads like a game of “button, button, who's got the button.” First the young teller has the hoard; then the bank president (or is he a vice president?) who is his uncle (maybe); and finally we get to K. M. Lee in Ajo. Let us dissect what happens here.
In 1934 K. M. Lee hands over his gold in response to the gold turn in order. But he does not comply with the law entirely, and he does not go underground entirely: instead he hands some of the gold hoard over to the bank, and keeps some of it back. This conduct is not as odd as what the teller does, however. The teller (who will later rise to become bank president) embezzles the gold and keeps it for himself. He had to embezzle it - for if he turned it over to the bank, the gold would stay there only until a bank examiner turned up and inquired, “Why is this gold in Arizona and not in Fort Knox?” The amount that was supposedly turned in was $13,000-$15,000 (Ford 1967, 100 and appendix 12). Where did a young teller in rural Arizona find $15,000 on short notice in the depths of the Depression? For the money to pay K. M. Lee the face value of his gold must come out of his pocket. If not, he would have a shortfall in his books of $15,000. And how did he sneak twenty-five kilograms of gold out of the bank?
Now K. M. Lee has a problem. He tried to be an honest citizen and turn in his gold - but he did not quite make it, because he did not turn it all in. The teller, later to become the bank president, has a similar problem: K. M. Lee turned in the gold, expecting it would go to the government - but it did not, it went to the teller. If K. M. Lee is going to risk the wrath of the law, surely he would hoard all the gold to himself - and not share the profits of his crime with young tellers, no matter how deserving. One might think this embezzlement would lead to suspicion and distrust. But no - when K. M. Lee decides to sell in the 1950s, whom does he use - but the bank president with the famous sticky fingers.
These stories are ridiculous. There is a simpler story that fits the facts. There was no bank president, who started his career by embezzling twenty-five kilos of gold. There was no K. M. Lee. The “Franklin Hoard” is a fake hoard story, with fake coins and bars - just like the phony shipwreck and the fake Mexican gold bars. The “Franklin Hoard” items were made in the 1950s. This other, simpler, story corresponds with the ample evidence that proves that the questionable USAOG pieces must be false.