VI. Fake Western Private Coins.

Fake western private coins exist from five issuers: Blake & Co., J. H. Bowie, the Diana Gambling House, the G. W. Hall Company, and J. J. Conway.

1. Blake operated for only a few days in 1855 as Blake & Co. rather than as Blake & Agrell.
 
The questionable Blake & Co. double eagles bear the date 1855. This is a difficult achievement, since Blake & Co. only operated for forty-eight hours (Adams 1913, 108) or ninety-six hours (Kagin 1981, 171-72) in 1855. It is implausible that Blake would go to the expense of making coin dies for 1855, when he was only going to use them for that short a period.

2. Iconography proves that the Blake & Co. coin is false.
 
The Blake & Co. double eagle depicts a coin press on the obverse, and a series of circles like a phonograph record on the reverse. This unusual iconography was not typical of California private gold coins. After an experimental period, by 1855 California private gold coins closely resembled Federal gold coins, with a head of Liberty on one side and an eagle on the other. There is a pattern coin in copper for an 1856 double eagle by Blake & Co. with a good long pedigree (Garrett:882). This pattern is done in the Federal style - and looks exactly like a Federal double eagle, except for its inscription. The copper pattern of 1856 corresponds to what we would expect Blake to produce in that period. The gold double eagles with the coin press do not.

3. Technological problems prove the Blake & Co. double eagles are false.
 
The questionable Blake double eagles have the denomination added with an incuse counterstamp. Humbert used this method in 1851, but it was abandoned by him later that year - it was too easy to alter. It is not credible that Blake would use this primitive technique in 1856, when the 1856 copper patterns show he could produce much finer coins.
The Blake & Co. double eagles were not struck in a collar, unlike the copper pattern. Badly made edges are a recurring problem in these post-1950 forgeries.

4. The misspelling “Agnell” proves that the “Blake & Agnell” pieces are fake; as are the Blake & Co. coins they die link with.
 
Agrell's name is misspelled “Agnell” on the “Blake & Agnell” $50 piece. The misspelling is also on “Blake & Agnell” ingots for $25 and $23.50.
This misspelling has been defended on the grounds that other examples of private gold are misspelled: Shultz/Shults, Parsons/Parson (Kagin 1981, 171; Adams 2000). But there are degrees of misspellings, which we can measure through the Soundex system. Shultz and Shults have the same Soundex code: S432. And so do Parsons and Parson: P625. But Agrell and Agnell have different numbers. Agrell is A264. Agnell is A254.
The Soundex system demonstrates that this is not a normal spelling variant. But it is exactly the sort of error we would expect if someone made these coins in the 1950s. For the spelling “Agnell” is a typographical error in Adams' history of California private gold - the source that was available to a forger working at the time (Adams 1913, 108).
In conclusion, the Blake & Co. copper pattern of 1856 is genuine; the Blake & Co. gold bars from the Central America are genuine; the silver bars issued by Francis Blake are genuine; but the other coins and bars that purport to be from Blake & Co. or “Blake & Agnell” are fake. Another researcher, Michael Marotta, has come to the same conclusion about the Blake & Co. $20 (Marotta 2000).

1. Who was J. H. Bowie?
 
Those who argue the case for the genuineness of the Bowie $5 coin rely on what has been discovered about Bowie's biographical history. But just because a Joseph Haskins Bowie existed, that does not mean that he made the $5 Bowie piece - or the $1 copper pattern for that matter. Queen Victoria existed; we can prove she was a real person; that does not mean that every coin that depicts Queen Victoria is genuine.

It is useful to review what we know about the biographies of the historical Bowies before we approach the question of the genuineness of the Bowie $5 gold piece, partly because previous accounts have many mistakes (Kagin 1981, 65-67; Stack's 1/2001:1608).

There are at least two Bowies who could be likely candidates for the J. H. Bowie who issued the $1 pattern: Joseph Haskins Bowie of Baltimore and John H. Bowie of New York City. We begin with the Maryland Bowie, to whom Kagin ascribed the piece.

a. Joseph Haskins Bowie of Maryland.
 
Joseph Haskins Bowie, the eldest child of James Bowie and his wife, Anna Maria Barclay Haskins, was born in Georgetown, D.C., on January 5, 1816. He grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, and then went to Baltimore. In the 1840 Federal census his household includes himself, his first wife, and a maidservant (Federal Census 1840, M653, roll 160). His first wife was Catherine Elizabeth Ran, by whom he would have one child. The Baltimore city directories from 1840 until 1845 show him working as a gold and silversmith (Matchett 1840-5). In the mid-1840s he moved to Illinois. On March 12, 1849 he left Baltimore on the St. Andrew, bound for Panama, with his cousins Hyde Raye and Hamilton Bowie (Haskins 1890). On the Pacific side the Bowies obtained passage from a whaler, the Sylph, which arrived in San Francisco on July 27, 1849 (Gardiner 1970, 61, 299). At the time of the 1860 Federal census Bowie was living in Edensburg, Hidalgo County, Texas. He was married to his second wife, Harriet Godfrey; they had two girls, Lilly and Ann, and one boy, Joseph (Federal census 1860, M653, roll 1297). Bowie returned to Monticello, Illinois, and died on a visit to St. Louis, Missouri, on January 5, 1879, aged exactly 63 (Bowie 1899, 153-54).

The other material published in numismatic books and auction catalogs about Bowie is imaginative fiction: whether Bowie as a child played beneath pine trees on a plantation in Montgomery county, childhood trips to North Carolina, by what means he crossed the Isthmus, where Bowie stayed when he arrived in San Francisco, and what he did after he arrived.

b. John H. Bowie of New York.
 
An alternative candidate to Joseph Haskins Bowie is John H. Bowie. He traded as John H. Bowie & Co. of 30 Ferry Street, New York City. In Wilson's 1849 city directory of New York, he advertises that he makes Hose for Croton water for fire engines, steamboats etc. etc., manufactured from the best oak tanned leather, with wrought copper rivets on hand and for sale at the lowest prices.

In the same directory for 1850-51, his advertisement reads, Awarded a gold medal at the late fair of the American Institute for the best leather hose and pipes. They have always on hand hose for Croton water, engines, steamboats etc., manufactured of the best materials, and for sale at the lowest prices.

Many California coiners came from New York City - Dan H. Moran, John Little Moffat, David Broderick, Frederick D. Kohler, Norris Gregg & Norris (Adams 1913, 61, 89-90, 101). Broderick and Kohler were firemen, so they would know Bowie's hoses. Norris Gregg & Norris were in a similar line of business; Bowie made copper rivets for hoses to run Croton water, Norris Gregg & Norris made fittings for steam, water, and gas pipes. These similar backgrounds suggest that John H. Bowie was the Bowie who made the $1 pattern.

It is possible that a third man - other than Joseph Haskins Bowie of Maryland or John H. Bowie of New York - struck the pattern with the name “J. H. Bowie.” The directories of the period are filled with James, John, and Joseph Bowies, and any of them could be our coiner. But given what we know of the backgrounds of the other coiners - Moran, Norris Gregg & Norris, Moffat, Kohler, and Broderick - John H. Bowie of New York is the likeliest possibility.

2. The lettering on the Bowie $5 is distinct from that on the well-pedigreed Bowie $1 copper pattern.
 
The J. H. Bowie $5 is modeled on a coin for which there is a good pedigree - the J. H. Bowie $1 pattern. But when we compare the Bowie $5 to the Bowie $1, the differences are distinct. The punches are from a different font. Hodder has misunderstood this argument, purporting to think that it is an argument based on punch linkage (Hodder 1999, 106). This is incorrect; the argument points to the different type fonts, which apply without regard to size. The letters on the Bowie $1 are much cruder. The G has an additional hook on the bottom right; it does not have this on the Bowie $5. The bars of the W cross each other; they do not do so on the Bowie $5.

3. The Bowie $5 coins differ in several important respects from the well-pedigreed Bowie $1 copper pattern.
 
The fineness is indicated in carats on the Bowie $1 pattern; it is indicated in thousandths on the questionable Bowie $5. The word dollars is abbreviated “DOL.” on the Bowie $1; it is spelt out “DOLLARS” on the Bowie $5. The term “Grains” is abbreviated “G.” on the Bowie $1; it is abbreviated “GRS.” on the Bowie $5. The numeral 1 is large enough to dominate the field on the Bowie $1; the numeral 5 is reduced in size so that it takes up less than half the field on the Bowie $5. The Bowie $1 puts “CAL.” above the tree and “GOLD” below; on the Bowie $5, “CAL. GOLD” both appear above the tree. The Bowie $5 has the date “1849” below the tree, the Bowie $1 has no date at all. The Bowie $1 has a broad, flat rim surrounding the field on the face that bears the numeral; the Bowie $5 has no such broad, flat rim.

Like the questionable western gold bars, the Bowie $5 gives us much information we do not need: the fineness to the nearest thousandth (879 grains), and a date. This information is useless if the piece were going to circulate in San Francisco in 1849: there were not enough parting acids available for someone to check if the coin really contained 879 thousandths. But this information, especially the date, is useful if one is passing a forgery as one of the earliest coins of the California Gold Rush.

It would have been impossible for these Bowie $1s and $5s to circulate together. They were struck to different finenesses and different weight standards. Coiners tried to produce coins where the denominations were related - so if you had five Bowie $1 coins, they would weigh as much as one Bowie $5. In order to accept the Bowie $5 as genuine, we must believe that Bowie rejected his entire original coinage idea (as expressed in the $1 pattern), and then created a totally different issue. This is not credible. Norris, Gregg & Norris had no trouble circulating coins that were stamped “without alloy;” so why did not Bowie just stick with his original plan, instead of preparing dies for coins that are 879 thousandths fine?

It has been suggested that Bowie made his dies in Baltimore and brought them to California (Stack's 1/2001:1608). This cannot be the case for the Bowie $5 coins - Bowie had no way of knowing that California gold would be 879 thousandths fine in Baltimore. Let us suppose that Bowie made both the $1 and $5 dies in California. Why, since he was on the spot and knew the fineness of California gold, did he first make the $1 dies with a 24 carat fineness, and then switch to the 879 thousandths? He would have put himself to much unnecessary work. The third hypothesis, that Bowie made the $1 dies in Baltimore, brought them to California, and then made the $5 dies, is no more satisfactory. Why, having gone to the trouble of bringing coining equipment across the Isthmus of Panama, did he abandon his original plan and start again from scratch in the difficult circumstances of San Francisco in 1849? Transporting coining equipment to the west coast was not easy (Adams 1913, 92).

None of these hypotheses is believable. The explanation that fits the facts best is that the Bowie $1 was a genuine pattern made on the east coast, and the Bowie $5 a modern forgery.

4. The skewed pattern of discovery of new Bowie $5s shows that a forger is at work.
 
Although the Bowie $1 copper pattern, which is unique, has a pedigree back to the Stickney sale in 1907, the Bowie $5's pedigree is much shorter. It was first published in 1961 in Henry Clifford's article on pioneer gold, and Clifford only came across it after he had prepared the main body of the article (Clifford 1961, 27). John Ford then owned the coin; a photograph was published in a New Netherlands advertisement of 1963 (see New Netherlands Auction 57, 12/1963). The second example turned up in 1982 (Hodder 1999, 106). The third example turned up in August 2000. Until recently, no source has been published for these three pieces, except vague remarks of “discovered in a western collection.” “A western collection” is probably a euphemism for Paul Franklin, the “discoverer” of the “Franklin Hoard,” for the Bowie $5 was consigned to an auction with other pieces we know to have been in his estate - see Stack's 1/2001:1608. For over sixty years only one Bowie $1 piece - and that a pattern in copper - was known to collectors. In half that time not one, but three gold examples of the Bowie $5 have turned up. This contradicts what we know about the relative survival rates of gold and copper. Dave Bowers has interviewed John Ford, who says that all three of these coins trace back to Paul Franklin, who got them from a family in Massachusetts in the 1950s (Bowers 2002, 350 note 2). This pedigree blatantly contradicts the Stack's catalog of 2001, which stated that the 1983 Bowie $5 and the 2001 Bowie $5 both “came previously unheralded from a collection out west” (Stack's 2001:1608). In 1961, when the first Bowie $5 was leaked onto the market, Henry Clifford acclaimed it as “unique” (Clifford 1961). In 1983 Donald Kagin believed he had made a major discovery when he found the second Bowie $5 (Kagin 1983). In 1999, Hodder claimed that each of the two Bowie coins he knew of then (although Franklin and Ford knew of three) had an independent pedigree (Hodder 1999, 106 n. 44); yet in 2002 we learn that the pedigrees of the three coins are by no means independent, in fact they all lead back to Paul Franklin. Hodder, likewise, published the finding of the third Bowie $5 as yet another great discovery in 2000 (Hodder 2000). And John Ford and Paul Franklin sat back and knew that Clifford was wrong and Kagin was wrong and Hodder was wrong; for Paul Franklin had acquired all three at once. Yet Ford and Franklin said nothing to clear up the confusion until January 2001 (Bowers 2002, 350 note 2).

Hodder claims that the ANA authenticated this coin in 1982, and then published it on the cover of the September 1983 Numismatist (Hodder 1999, 106 n. 44). The coin does appear there, but the magazine has no discussion about the authenticity or provenance of the piece. Instead it has an article by Donald Kagin about Bowie's family background that is identical to his 1981 book. If the case for the authenticity of the Bowie coin is so strong, why was it not made in September 1983 instead of irrelevant genealogical digressions that were already published elsewhere?

5. Technological reasons prove the Bowie $5 is a forgery.

a. Problems with the fineness and non-destructive analysis prove the coin is a forgery.
 
The Bowie $5, which purports to be issued at the same time as the Bowie $1, uses a different gold standard. It says that it is struck from 879 fine gold. The Bowie $1 says that it was struck from 24-carat gold. This is analogous to the early private gold issues: Norris, Gregg & Norris were “without alloy” and the Mormon coins were “pure gold.” The questionable Bowie $5 piece uses a fineness in thousandths, rather than carats. It is improbable that California assayers were able to determine the fineness to that degree in 1849. In order to do so, one needed nitric acid, which was scarcer than gold. Moffat issued his bars in carats and fractions of the carat - his smallest fraction is thirty-seconds. Moffat could distinguish fineness only as far as one 768th. Yet if we are to credit the Bowie coin, Bowie could distinguish fineness to the nearest thousandth.

Non-destructive analysis has shown that the Bowie coins do not contain the amount of metal they purport to have. One tests at 860 fine; another at 884 (Stack's 1/2001:1608). 860 fine is over 2% debased. Given that Baldwin, considered the most notorious of the issuers of debased coins, debased his coins by only 3%, it seems surprising that Bowie should promise coins 879 fine, when he could not deliver this degree of fineness. Non-destructive testing shows that his coins could vary nearly 3% in fineness. Why promise fineness to the accuracy of one-thousandth, when Bowie could not deliver fineness to the accuracy of one hundredth - and, it was, moreover, a degree of accuracy that none of his competitors was promising?

b. The oddly high rim is not typical of the early California issues.
 
The Bowie $5 also has an oddly high rim, as if it were struck under tremendous pressure, yet we know that the early California issues were struck with sledgehammers, not with steam presses (Adams 1913, 61). All the fake Western coins have problems with their edges. The forgers never solved the problem of making a good collar.

When we look at the fake Bowie $5 and the copper $1 pattern it imitates, we can understand why this coin was forged. It has one of the simplest designs of any California coin: a stylistic pine tree that a child could draw. When the forgers tried more ambitious designs (such as the eagles for the Baldwin fake and the Southern Branch Mint proof piece), they made errors: the arrows were in the wrong claw or the wrong number of arrows. The Bowie coin was simple enough for the forgers to handle.

1. Technological evidence proves that the Diana Gambling House coins are fake.

A close physical examination of the Diana Gambling House double eagle reveals that the dentils on the outer border of the coin are made on one side by a series of raised triangles, on the other by a series of large raised dots. These weird dentils are seen on no other coin. This crude attempt to create dentils may explain why the forgers made so few monetiform fakes: they did not have the ability to make good fake coins (unless they used transfer dies, as in the case of the USAOG pieces).

2. Iconographic evidence proves that the Diana Gambling House coins are fake.
 
The Diana Gambling House coins have a fancy “western style” lettering with curlicues. This lettering is found on no other private gold; other coins use simpler Roman fonts. The Colorado private coiner Conway in 1860 did use an ornamented typeface for the numerals that indicated the denomination; but for his lettering he used a normal Roman face. We associate fancy lettering with the “Wild West,” because we have images of the “WANTED” posters of the old cowboy movies. These fancy lettering display typefaces, however, were used for special purposes. In the case of the posters, it was designed to capture people's attention (Kelly 1969, 187, 292-93). These display faces also appear on obsolete banknotes, but there the printers were using as many obscure typefaces as possible to forestall forgery by rogue printers (Haxby 1988, 253). Obscure punch faces, however, have almost never been used as a method of forestalling coin forgery, because the small size of letters on coins makes it easy for a counterfeiter to imitate them by freehand, even if he cannot obtain an identical punch set. The forgers who created the Diana Gambling House coins used the fancy lettering because they were creating an imaginary West - the West of the cowboy movies and the television shows of the 1950s.

3. Legal and economic circumstances determine why a gaming establishment would not issue gold coins.
 
Gaming houses were reluctant to issue chips with names, because a zealous prosecutor could use it as proof to close up them up. It is only after the legalization of gaming in 1931 in Nevada that chips with names began to proliferate; they became common after 1965, when a replacement was needed for the silver dollars that had disappeared (Herz and Herz 1995). San Francisco was a wide open city for gaming houses in this period, but gambling was still illegal, and to issue a double eagle saying “Games of Chance” with an address would have tempted fate. Furthermore, if any San Francisco gaming house did issue its own coin, it would not have chosen the denomination of $20, because the standard bets ranged from 50 cents to 10 dollars (Asbury 1933, 26). The bets were cheap; the turnover was high. If a gaming house had issued coins, they would have made smaller denominations than $20, like those of so many other issuers.

There are good economic reasons for gaming establishments not to mint their own double eagles. Gaming establishments take coin in; they do not pay it out. They operate on the principle of instant gratification: the miners were flush with gold and they wanted to gamble, right away. The miners preferred fast games like monte, faro, rondo, roulette, rouge et noir and vingt et un; poker, for them, was too slow (Asbury 1933, 20). They did not want to waste time having their gold dust minted into double eagles. But if the Diana had kept a supply of ready-minted double eagles on hand, it would have to tie up much capital. The daily turnover of a San Francisco casino could exceed $200,000. One gambler cleaned the Diana out of $89,000 in just three days (Asbury 1933, 26). It is hard to believe that the Diana Gambling House would keep some $89,000 on hand in double eagles - 4,450 pieces - for such an occasion. The gaming house would sterilize too much of its working capital. Gaming establishments use checks and chips to centralize the use of cash and prevent embezzlement. But gaming checks made out of gold with the full value of the double eagle are an open temptation to embezzlement - especially if some four thousand have to be kept on hand.

San Francisco gaming houses did not issue coins and tokens, for there were ample substitutes around. There were Moffat bars in many denominations. Haggard, in his paper to the Royal Numismatic Society in London in 1849, displayed one of Moffat's standardized $16 bars. He added, “There are other bars, from 14 to 60 dollars value, which pass as money; they are chiefly used in gambling” (Haggard 1850, 41).

After Moffat the gaming industry made use of the Kohler bars issued by the State Assay Office. As one pioneer recalled in 1868: “The ‘bankers,’ monte, faro, and others, being short of coin, and having plenty of dust, had it converted into slugs of that [$50] denomination, which they circulated as freely as any other coin, the stamp of the assayer in all cases being taken as its true value” (Adams 1913, 10). After Kohler stopped issuing his bars, the 50 dollar octagons of Humbert and the U.S. Assay Office of Gold passed out of the pockets of the miners and into those of the casino owners.

A number of gaming counters have the inscription “California Token” or “California Counter”(Kagin 1981, 374-75); but just because a counter bears the name “California” does not mean it was used there. Putting “California” upon a counter that looked like a double eagle allowed a counter manufacturer to create something that looked enough like a coin to be attractive to gamblers, but not so much like a coin that it would be passed off as a counterfeit. These counters could be used in the gaming halls in the eastern United States or at the German watering places, as well as in California. Many were manufactured in Birmingham, Nuremberg, or France.

A close physical examination shows why the Diana Gambling House pieces cannot be genuine. That conclusion is further confirmed by a consideration of the economics of the time.

4. The Diana Gambling House coins share a common pedigree with the phony USAOG pieces, the Mexican gold bars, and the Bowie coins.
 
In his January 2001 interview with Dave Bowers, John Ford made a revealing admission: the Diana Gambling House coins were obtained from the same source as the Bowie $5s and some unusual Humbert patterns - a family in Massachusetts (Bowers 2002, 350 n. 2). And who was the assiduous numismatic scholar who located the family that had these treasures? Why, none other than the hyperactive Paul G. Franklin, who in 1957 also located the “Franklin Hoard” of USAOG items and who in 1954 was the first person to display one of the bogus Mexican gold bars. This pedigree does not inspire confidence in the genuineness of these pieces.

E. The J. J. Conway $5 without denomination (Breen 7949).

Breen suggests that 7949 may be the unfinished die of 7948, although he expressed some doubt by adding a question mark . Breen's suggestion that 7949 is an unfinished die of 7948 cannot be correct. The obverse die - the die with the name Conway - is totally different from 7948 (the regular half eagle). A careful comparison of the photographs in Kagin confirms this (Kagin 1981, 321). The first star in the central field that is below the ampersand on the left is above the letter B on 7948; it is not above the letter B on 7949. On 7949, if one draws a line midway between the B and A of BANKERS, one will find that it hits a star. On 7948, if one draws that line, it will not hit a star. The two stars that separate J. J. CONWAY from BANKERS have six points on 7948; they have five points on 7949. The letter punches are also different. The letters C and O are oval on 7948; they are round on 7949. This observation applies to the reverse as well.

A comparison of the questionable piece, Breen 7949, to the Bashlow “restrike,” shows that the Bashlow “restrike” has the same, more rounded, letter punches that Breen 7949 does.

The first appearance at auction of Breen 7949 was in the Kreisberg-Schulman sale of March 1965, lot 25A. No provenance was given.

The J. J. Conway half eagle overstrike (Breen 7949) is a modern fake, made by the same forgers who made the dies that Robert Bashlow used to produce his Conway “restrikes.”

Return to Index
On to next chapter