In its 1997 issue, the AJN published an article entitled ‘False Western American Gold Bars’. Its author, T.V. Buttrey, discussed a group of assay bars which he condemned as modern forgeries. The article has generated much discussion. In March 1999, Michael Hodder delivered the Groves lecture on Western Assay Bars in which he took issue with Buttrey’s view and defended the authenticity of many of the pieces that had been condemned by Buttrey. In August 1999 the American Numismatic Association organized as part of their educational theater program at the 1999 World’s Fair of Money in Chicago a debate between Michael Hodder and Theodore Buttrey. Over the last few months numerous articles on this topic have appeared in the numismatic press.

The following comment was sent by ANS Fellow Q. David Bowers. As all other communications or articles in the AJN or other publications of the ANS, it does not represent the opinion of the ANS or any of its officers and staff. This communication will conclude the discussion on this topic in any of the publications of the American Numismatic Society.

  Editor

Reference is made to an article, “False Western American Gold Bars,” by T.V. Buttrey, in American Journal of Numismatics, Second Series 9 (1997). As part of Mr. Buttrey’s dissertation he notes that “In the 1950s previously unknown western [gold] bars began to appear on the market…bearing the names of firms previously unknown as manufacturers of gold bars—Adams, Argenti, Bates, Bell, etc. The list runs to about fifty different names.” He went on to state that certain items that I had catalogued for our 1982 auction presentation of selections from the Henry Clifford Collection were false. I was not given a copy of the Buttrey article before it appeared in print. Further, I am not aware that Mr. Buttrey did any of the following things, which would have been easy enough to have done:

1. View the items being offered in the Clifford sale.
2. Ask to inspect them or even subject them to non-destructive metallic analysis.
3. Correspond with me concerning his opinions about them.

Let me say that as of this present writing (January 1999), not a single person other than Mr. Buttrey has made even the slightest negative comment about the items in the Clifford sale, and bidders at the sale—including some of America’s leading dealers, specialists, and experts—were all very enthusiastic about the items presented.

In his article, Mr. Buttrey stated, in part, "Because the documentation is so poor there is almost no literature bearing directly on the western bars. What we are told of them is found almost entirely in individual entries in the auction catalogues and is unsupported..."

He then went on to focus primarily upon the auction catalogues of B. Max Mehl, of Fort Worth, Texas, noting that a survey of the complete corpus of his catalogues through to the end of his series in the 1950s disclosed the listing of only two gold bars, one from the New York Assay Office and the other from the Denver Mint.

If I had consulted these catalogues as my prime source, I would have to agree that there is "almost no literature bearing directly on the western bars."

However, it is too bad that Mr. Buttrey did not take the effort to consult contemporary San Francisco business directories, or if he did, he overlooked the numerous advertisements of firms—including some he mentioned—that, in fact, made the manufacturing of gold bars one of their most important business specialties. I can, simply by looking in one or two directories, furnish multiple assayers who advertised that they made gold bars. Some of these advertisements occupy a full page, and thus are not very hard to find.

Good news for Mr. Buttrey (and many others as well). Researcher Dan Owens has completed the manuscript for a new book, the working title of which is An Encyclopedia of California Coiners and Assayers Related to Numismatics, 1849-1863. Upon publication, Mr. Buttrey will find hundreds of pages of documentation about firms that issued gold bars, nearly all of this material having come from readily available sources.

I agree with Mr. Buttrey that B. Max Mehl catalogues have very few gold bars of any kind. However, I could also make the statement that if I were researching certain other fields, I certainly would not use Mehl’s catalogues as my prime source. As examples, Mehl’s fine catalogues contain very little in the way of descriptive listings of such series as National Bank notes, Civil War tokens, numismatic books and literature, and mint errors—and this is just a short list.

This absent-from-Mehl-catalogues comment could be applied to hundreds of different American numismatic items, not just to Western gold bars and the subjects listed. Just because something was not listed in a B. Max Mehl catalogue does not mean that it does not exist.

At this point let me suggest that as a student of American numismatic history, I have seen many instances in which series that are very popular today were lightly chronicled, if at all, in early auction catalogues. This is because of several factors: either the items were not known (such as the 1817/4 overdate Capped Bust half-dollar, first publicized in the early 1930s, but for which there are now seven examples known), or were not particularly popular (very little is to be found in print prior to the 1940s concerning numismatic varieties of National bank notes—today a tremendously popular field of numismatic activity, or the aforementioned mint errors). It is the case that many different areas in numismatics that are popular today were lightly treated in earlier times, or were not featured in auction catalogues, or were not studied intensively.

The comment by Mr. Buttrey, “How is it that bars which had been unknown for a hundred years were suddenly not just available, but relatively common and so diverse?” could similarly be applied to any number of other American series. As noted, one does not have to look very far outside of regular federal coinage series to find many areas to which this “logic” could fit—how about early 19th century trade tokens of Illinois? How about National Bank notes of Maine? Such series have become popular and widely discussed in print since the 1950s; earlier, many numismatists ignored them. Even in the federal series there are countless discoveries dating from the 1950s to present, including the startling news, published in the late 1970s, that a previously unknown date and mintmark had been found: the 1870-S half dime. The list could be extended on and on.

Indeed, many discoveries have been made since the 1950s, and more discoveries will be made in the future.

If a given gold bar was first discovered in 1953, or 1964, or yesterday, that does not mean that it is false or even questionable. A great example is provided by the discovery in the late 1980s of the long-submerged S.S. Central America which brought to light an even more dazzling array of gold bars—some of them weighing many pounds, and bearing imprints not earlier known to currently exist, although such existed at one time—per early advertisements.

Concerning my own experience with Western numismatic Americana—bars and coins—I do not claim to know the last word on the subject, and I may discover something new tomorrow. However, I have enjoyed these series for a long time. In 1965 when Stackpole Books worked with the American Numismatic Society to reprint Edgar H. Adams’ classic 1913 reference, Private Gold Coinage of California, 1849-1855, I was asked to provide the new foreword, and I did.

Over the years I have written extensively about the Gold Rush and its relation to numismatics including in Adventures with Rare Coins (1978), American Coin Treasures and Hoards (1997), The Treasure Ship “S.S. Brother Jonathan” (1999), and in The Numismatist. I have catalogued and presented for sale some of the most important cabinets of California and related gold coins ever to be auctioned including the Garrett Collection (1979-1981 for The Johns Hopkins University), ingots and patterns from the Henry Clifford Collection (1982), the Norweb Collection (1987-1988), the Virgil M. Brand Collection (1983-1984), and the Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection (1982, 1996, and 1997), among others. Along the way I have catalogued examples of nearly every major variety of territorial and private gold coin, many different gold bars, and every regular issue coin ever struck by the San Francisco Mint including the unique 1870-S $3.