Although PCGS lists these as the same coin type, they look like different dies. On the reverse, the first waterfall is much steeper on one than another.
Interesting ...
The obverse dies are also different.
Good to note!
There seems to be a lot of interesting research to be done with these.
I'm not sure how the Fred Holabird NGC ones are laid out, but here's a left-and-right for comparison, along with the TrueViews for comparison again since we're on a new page.
@Zoins said: I know there's speculation of Zerbe's involvement, but what part is clear? Are there any records of his involvement?
Good God, man, the very first line from a link in your first post clears this up: M.E. Hart's Coins of the Golden West was a marketing concept devised by Farran Zerbe to sell Western souvenir gold tokens in San Francisco during 1915 and 1916? Perhaps you should be clear about things. Do you or don't you accept prior research and documentation on this fact??
Here's what I find puzzling: You'd like to dismiss the known involvement of Zerbe as "speculation" but want to accept "speculation" about Mrs. Mary E. Hart's involvement as fact. It doesn't seem logical to have it both ways.
@Maywood said: @Zoins said: I know there's speculation of Zerbe's involvement, but what part is clear? Are there any records of his involvement?
Good God, man, the very first line from a link in your first post clears this up: M.E. Hart's Coins of the Golden West was a marketing concept devised by Farran Zerbe to sell Western souvenir gold tokens in San Francisco during 1915 and 1916? Perhaps you should be clear about things. Do you or don't you accept prior research and documentation on this fact??
I know this has been repeated by many people over the years, but I haven't seen any primary research material definitively making the linkage. Have you?
Here's something from Koller which isn't definitive to me. Do you think this is proof, or do you have some other period evidence to refer to?
Brian Koller said:
How do we know that Zerbe was the force behind the M.E. Hart marketing campaign? The "smoking gun" is the great similarity of the framed M.E. Hart sets with the framed sets of P.P.I.E. commmemorative coins. Both frames were made to order from Shreve & Co., a San Francisco jeweler still in business today. The different frames are approximately the same size and have similar construction, down to a hammered copper outer frame, a plate of glass, insets for the coins or tokens, and descriptive purple labels.
This seems it could occur by simply calling the same frame dealer. I know it's something I would do if I wanted to do something similar, and I'm actually thinking about it to make a display like O'Dowd's
@Maywood said:
Here's what I find puzzling: You'd like to dismiss the known involvement of Zerbe as "speculation" but want to accept "speculation" about Mrs. Mary E. Hart's involvement as fact. It doesn't seem logical to have it both ways.
@Maywood said:
JMHO, There seems to be quite a bit of speculation about the true identity of M.E. Hart and any involvement she may have had with this set. There is one piece of history which is clear, at least to me: Farran Zerby, for all the good he did for Numismatics, was a bit of a shady character at worst and a shameless self-promoter at best. He seemed greed driven which is the genesis of the feud between him and Elder. I also find it peculiar that Mary E. Hart is on record in print refusing to return to lower 48. That's strange. It's also strange that everywhere she's mentioned it seems to be Mrs. Mary E. Hart, she had at least some notoriety and also some wealth. Why wouldn't she take advantage of that if she was starting some sort of company?? Why suddenly start to use only her initials to provide anonymity??
Like the old saying about ducks, how they walk and talk, this scheme was probably a duck and Farran Zerbe was the Pied Piper with the duck call in his mouth.
I know there's speculation of Zerbe's involvement, but what part is clear? Are there any records of his involvement?
I don't know why the initials could have been used, but she wasn't in the coin business before, so while she did have some fame, this new venture is in a slightly different area and could be a reason for using the initials.
I'm not saying this is any more or less likely than Zerbe being involved. I just haven't seen anything beyond speculation and coincidence.
Maybe you call each speculation but it's your inference is clear, one is fact and you choose to dismiss the other.
Maybe you should do a little more research on M.E. Hart, Mrs. Mary E. Hart and Farran Zerbe. I have done mine on Zerbe and my verdict is well established. Not much can be found on M.E. Hart, so that leaves you to follow down the rabbit hole with the Mrs., something it seems you have already undertaken with earnest. Good luck and please keep us posted. I'll do some extra digging and do the same.
Absent any new information I'll stick with what I already know.
@Maywood said:
Maybe you call each speculation but it's your inference is clear, one is fact and you choose to dismiss the other.
I'm not dismissing anything. Please don't read anything more into my posts than is in them.
@Maywood said:
Maybe you should do a little more research on M.E. Hart, Mrs. Mary E. Hart and Farran Zerbe. I have done mine on Zerbe and my verdict is well established. Not much can be found on M.E. Hart, so that leaves you to follow down the rabbit hole with the Mrs., something it seems you have already undertaken with earnest. Good luck and please keep us posted. I'll do some extra digging and do the same.
Absent any new information I'll stick with what I already know.
Please post any info you find. That would be great! I've been posting most of the primary, period research material in this thread, so I'm looking forward your posts with primary research material as well!
William D. Hyder posted back in 2013 that he believes Joseph Mayer, Zerbe, and Hart could all be involved!
William D. Hyder said:
Several sets of the “Coins of the Golden West” were sold in frames made by Shreve & Co. in San Francisco that closely match the frames Zerbe used for the Panama-Pacific commemorative coin sets. Zerbe purchased the remaining commemorative gold dollars at the end of the PPIE rather than return them to the mint and M.E. Hart marketed the dollars in 1916. Zerbe also had a prior marketing relationship with Joseph Mayer at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. While Jules Charbneau had moved into the insurance industry at the time of the PPIE, it would not be a stretch to see Mayer, Zerbe, and Hart team up to market the gold souvenirs.
Why do we not hear of M. E. Hart Company after 1916? Did the business not prove profitable? While that is a possibility, we also know that Mary E. Hart developed a terminal illness at some point after the last 1916 mention of the M.S. Hart Company. On March 9, 1921, Mary locked the doors to her room in the house of a friend in Los Angeles, stopped the cracks in the doors and windows, and turned on the gas lamps without lighting them. Her obituary reported that she feared a pending serious operation made necessary by her illness.
Mrs. Mary E. Hart, Alaska gold miner, editor, and lecturer; First Lady of the Arctic; and the best-known woman of the Northwest proclaimed her dictionary. In addition to her involvement in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the 1904 St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, she marketed Eskimo native art and artifacts, furs, and promoted cruises for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. That she either ran or lent her name to a business marketing gold souvenirs in 1915-16 seems well within reason. But, I have not yet found the fabled “smoking gun” and Mary’s story must remain a likely possibility. I invite readers to help confirm or disprove that M. E. Hart and Mary E. Hart are one and the same.
To my knowledge there are about 15 known to exist in the copper frame. I have only ever seen 2. It is the same frame used for the on pc set that had the $50 octagonal.
Just the Frame for harts gold set sold at heritage for around 6k I believe. This was over 10 years ago
@Ktp said:
To my knowledge there are about 15 known to exist in the copper frame. I have only ever seen 2. It is the same frame used for the on pc set that had the $50 octagonal.
Just the Frame for harts gold set sold at heritage for around 6k I believe. This was over 10 years ago
There are at least 3 frames and 2 with coins that I am aware of. Some one may have bought that frame and put coins back in it.
My grand father has one with the coins in his collection.
@Ktp said:
There are at least 3 frames and 2 with coins that I am aware of. Some one may have bought that frame and put coins back in it.
My grand father has one with the coins in his collection.
Ah very nice! I bet it's awesome to hold an entire set in it's original case from over 100 years ago!
I'm wondering if the empty frame used to house the Fred Holabird collection. That seems plausible since that came as a complete set and I haven't seen anyone trying to assemble this as a set.
Yeah it is pretty cool. I’nthe 60,s my grandfather was in a news paper
article and we was holding it in the photo that was put in the paper. Makes it kinda cool. The back looks like this. A single label on the bottom left.
@Ktp said:
Yeah it is pretty cool. I’nthe 60,s my grandfather was in a news paper article and we was holding it in the photo that was put in the paper. Makes it kinda cool. The back looks like this. A single label on the bottom left.
Sounds great!
Do you have a copy of the newspaper article? It would be great to add to this thread
Candidate No. 4 --- On April 26th, 1916, the San Jose Evening News wrote that Mrs. Marie Hart was reportedly awakened at 4 o'clock in the morning and found a burglar at work in her room at the Chesterfield Apartments, 560 Powell street. She jumped out of bed and made a rush at the thief, but the burglar beat her to the door and ran out into the street.
Thus she stepped forward into the light, as the most promising candidate for the long lost token dealer. Marie Hart was at the right place, at the right time and had the correct first initial and last name.
Did Mrs. Marie Hart like Mr. Fera work for Shreve & Co? A follow-up search through five contemporary newspapers for additional information about the attempted burglary, revealed no further news reports. At this point, a subsequent search through genealogy records has failed to yield anything of value.
Coins of the Golden West: Thus we began to look back and wonder if Marie Hart was a reporter's misinterpretation of Mary E. Hart. She certainly had the personality of someone who would chase a burglar from her room. Even though the apartments appear to have been upscale, they did have a transitory nature to them. On the other hand, if this was true, why didn't the reporter identify her as the so-called first lady of Alaska? She was well known to the press having written and or appeared in dozens of news items over the years.
We did find that Mary E. Hart, the journalist had spent the first four months of 1916 in Missouri visiting relatives before returning sometime in April to Corte Madera. In 1916, she listed her in town address as the Palace Hotel. Thus Mary E. and Marie Hart could have been two separate individuals.
Coincidentally, in a 1920 San Francisco Commonwealth Club membership list, the name of T.W.H. Shanahan, Superintendent of the San Francisco Branch Mint, can be found listed at the 560 Powell Street address. Just who was the proprietor of the M.E. Hart Co.? The evidence points to Farran Zerbe, along with the assistance or namesake of Mary E. Hart, Bruno Fera, Marie Hart, or a combination of the preceding names? However, like William Hyder we have not yet found the fabled "smoking gun" that positively identifies that person or persons.
@Maywood said: Candidate No. 4 --- On April 26th, 1916, the San Jose Evening News wrote that Mrs. Marie Hart was reportedly awakened at 4 o'clock in the morning and found a burglar at work in her room at the Chesterfield Apartments, 560 Powell street. She jumped out of bed and made a rush at the thief, but the burglar beat her to the door and ran out into the street.
Thus she stepped forward into the light, as the most promising candidate for the long lost token dealer. Marie Hart was at the right place, at the right time and had the correct first initial and last name.
Did Mrs. Marie Hart like Mr. Fera work for Shreve & Co? A follow-up search through five contemporary newspapers for additional information about the attempted burglary, revealed no further news reports. At this point, a subsequent search through genealogy records has failed to yield anything of value.
Coins of the Golden West: Thus we began to look back and wonder if Marie Hart was a reporter's misinterpretation of Mary E. Hart. She certainly had the personality of someone who would chase a burglar from her room. Even though the apartments appear to have been upscale, they did have a transitory nature to them. On the other hand, if this was true, why didn't the reporter identify her as the so-called first lady of Alaska? She was well known to the press having written and or appeared in dozens of news items over the years.
We did find that Mary E. Hart, the journalist had spent the first four months of 1916 in Missouri visiting relatives before returning sometime in April to Corte Madera. In 1916, she listed her in town address as the Palace Hotel. Thus Mary E. and Marie Hart could have been two separate individuals.
Coincidentally, in a 1920 San Francisco Commonwealth Club membership list, the name of T.W.H. Shanahan, Superintendent of the San Francisco Branch Mint, can be found listed at the 560 Powell Street address. Just who was the proprietor of the M.E. Hart Co.? The evidence points to Farran Zerbe, along with the assistance or namesake of Mary E. Hart, Bruno Fera, Marie Hart, or a combination of the preceding names? However, like William Hyder we have not yet found the fabled "smoking gun" that positively identifies that person or persons.
The candidates Bruno Ferdinand Fera and Mrs. Marie Hart seem to be from Mike Locke and Dan Owens who published their findings in 2015 looking up people associated with the 560 Powell St., San Francisco address and finding that Fera was employed by Shreve & Co. in San Francisco, the firm that made the copper frame. This is in the article Will The Real M.E. Hart Please Stand Up? as mentioned.
The candidates of Fera and Marie Hart by Mike Locke and Dan Owens are interesting, however, I wish Mike and Dan would have included primary source material in their article, like provided by Brian Koller and in this thread. Can anyone find the article regarding the burglary on 560 Powell in the April 26th, 1916 issue of the San Jose Evening News or any material for the other information they reference? Hopefully, the information in the article by Mike Locke and Dan Owens can be supplemented with primary source material.
This dealer has their Facebook page heading with the harts set image
This is Premier Rare Coins, LLC, Jeffrey Behan's company. For tracing purposes, it's useful to include both dealers as well as collectors, so this set is pedigreed to both Fred Holabird and Jeffrey Behan now.
Oh my bad. I reached out to Fred back in 2017. He said he sold 4 or 5 sets in the frame and has seen about 10 sets in the frame. That is where I get the 15 number. Who knows if any of those were the same set seen or sold multiple times.
It is a shame the frame only that sold doesn’t have a picture of the back. The labels are numbered. Not sure what they mean but my grand fathers has a 1 and 2 and the eBay one has a 5 & 9 on the label.
@Ktp said:
Oh my bad. I reached out to Fred back in 2017. He said he sold 4 or 5 sets in the frame and has seen about 10 sets in the frame. That is where I get the 15 number. Who knows if any of those were the same set seen or sold multiple times.
Great info. Over time, the more sales that are documented online, the better, especially with specimens going through CoinFacts and TrueViews.
It is a shame the frame only that sold doesn’t have a picture of the back. The labels are numbered. Not sure what they mean but my grand fathers has a 1 and 2 and the eBay one has a 5 & 9 on the label.
That's very interesting. I wonder what they mean as well.
This was an interesting foray into archived material to attempt an identification, made difficult by the passage of time and the nature of some of the people involved. It's hard for me not to be cynical about the whole origin of these interesting jewelry tokens, but after re-reading the whole thread that's where I end up. The images are also interesting since they show different dies used for tokens which were struck in low numbers. My final assessment is that we'll probably never know the circumstances around the owners of the company and when/who struck the tokens.
Potential new variety discovery from Old West Gold!
Old West Gold said:
NEW VARIETY! 1915 CALIFORNIA GOLD MINERVA 1/4 HART'S COINS OF THE WEST, NGC MS65
Another NEW VARIETY just discovered by Oldwestgold! We're awaiting the confirmation from the author of MEHARTGOLD.COM but it clearly appears to be a new variety find. This will make four new variety finds of the Hart's Coins of the Golden West series by Oldwestgold. It is certified and graded by NGC as MS65. The obverse is CMRQ-6 yet it has the reverse die variety of CMRQ-2 & 3 which are dated 1848 & 1849 respectively. This is the only specimen known to-date of this variety.
UPDATE/CONFIRMED: NEW DISCOVERY VARIETY WHICH HAS BEEN GIVEN THE ATTRIBUTE OF CMRQ-11. THE WEBSITE REFLECTS OUR NEW DISCOVERY FIND NOW. SEE LAST PHOTO. PHOTO CREDIT: MEHARTGOLD.COM
Hope Brian Koller of MEHarGold.com is able to comment on this and indicate if this is a new variety or not!
Here's an original 1909 AYPE box from Old West Gold:
Old West Gold said:
Hart's Coins of the Golden West, Original Box, 3-Piece Set 1909 AYPE Gold Tokens
Original issue box only. 57 mm x 42.5 mm x 9 mm. The lid is tattered but shows the seal of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific-Exposition. The base is much better preserved, the plush interior of which has slots for a complete set that includes one example each of the 1/4 DWT, 1/2 DWT and 1 DWT tokens. Deep, rich maroon color on the exterior, except where impaired by scuffing. This is the first box of this type that we can recall offering, and it is presumably very rare. There are NO gold tokens in this lot.
Here's a description of the set from AU Capital Management, LLC (Russell Augustin) with a good passage on Mary Elizabeth Hart:
AU Capital Management said:
By 1904, Mary Hart was traveling regularly between San Francisco and Alaska, as well as Los Angeles and Tacoma – a tireless promoter of Alaska, she was the manager of Alaska's exhibits at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, continuing her Alaska promotions into the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. She also had family connections with Mayer and Brothers Jewelers, makers of the Alaska-Yukon tokens, and was active in marketing all the Golden West issues at the 1916 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. While there is no “smoking gun” indicating that Mary E. Hart was responsible for producing the “Coins of Golden West”, ancillary evidence strongly suggests that she was in the thick of it. With her interest in the gold industry (and an impressive collection of Alaska gold nuggets), she is a natural fit for the persona of “M.E. Hart”, the original promoter of these fascinating private gold issues.
AU Capital Management said:
1849-1915 Hart's "Coins of the Golden West" 36pc Set in Tiffany Frame
SOLD
SKU#: 18491915SET
RARE AND ENIGMATIC 36 coin SET of
“COINS OF THE GOLDEN WEST”
FEWER THAN A DOZEN KNOWN SETS EXIST!
The last complete set to appear for sale at public auction realized $73,500
Long considered a “Crown jewel” for Pioneer gold collectors
Similar in shape and dimension to the California Fractional Gold series, the privately struck gold “Coins of the Golden West” have been puzzling researchers for decades. Struck in 10 ct. gold or finer (with the Alaska-Yukon series coming in at approx. 21 ct, according to Burnie), these mysterious and gold issues are a colorful commemoration of all U.S. gold rush locales and feature unusual denominations such as Pinch, DWT and Minerva Bear.
Group includes:
Alaska Pinch Series – 6 pcs.,
Parka Heads – 3 pcs.,
Alaska-Yukon Expo – 3 pcs.,
Minerva Bears – 6 pcs.,
Indian Bears – 6 pcs.,
Idaho Gold – 3 pcs.,
Montana Gold – 3 pcs.,
Oregon Gold – 3 pcs.,
Washington Gold – 3 pcs.
M.E. Hart, the original marketer of these beautiful gold tokens (along with Farran Zerbe) is even somewhat of a mystery – speculation exists that it is the person of Mary E. Hart, one of the most prominent and flamboyant businesswomen of the era.
A brief look at the trajectory of her life puts Mary E. Hart at the epicenter of the Golden West set distribution:
By 1904, Mary Hart was traveling regularly between San Francisco and Alaska, as well as Los Angeles and Tacoma – a tireless promoter of Alaska, she was the manager of Alaska's exhibits at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, continuing her Alaska promotions into the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. She also had family connections with Mayer and Brothers Jewelers, makers of the Alaska-Yukon tokens, and was active in marketing all the Golden West issues at the 1916 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. While there is no “smoking gun” indicating that Mary E. Hart was responsible for producing the “Coins of Golden West”, ancillary evidence strongly suggests that she was in the thick of it. With her interest in the gold industry (and an impressive collection of Alaska gold nuggets), she is a natural fit for the persona of “M.E. Hart”, the original promoter of these fascinating private gold issues.
Marketed at the above Expositions from 1904 to 1916, the set makes an impressive visual, 36 pieces of privately minted, golden art!
Truly, an unusual opportunity to acquire one of these rare and desirable private gold sets -not to be missed!
Comments
Good to note!
There seems to be a lot of interesting research to be done with these.
I'm not sure how the Fred Holabird NGC ones are laid out, but here's a left-and-right for comparison, along with the TrueViews for comparison again since we're on a new page.
Here's an Idaho Gold piece along with the individual photos from the Fred Holabird auction, which have much higher resolution than my crop above.
PCGS Coin Number 705753 is interesting in that it's clearly two different types, not just die varieties.
Here are the TrueViews with the Holabird photos:
Regarding the Montana pieces, it could be that the TrueViews are of pieces with different sizes. Here are the images from the Holabird set:
Here's a photo with caption:
And another newspaper clipping. This one is from:
The St. Louis Star and Times of St. Louis, Missouri on 09 Jun 1914, Tue, Page 3
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/7205454/the-st-louis-star-and-times/
@Zoins said: I know there's speculation of Zerbe's involvement, but what part is clear? Are there any records of his involvement?
Good God, man, the very first line from a link in your first post clears this up: M.E. Hart's Coins of the Golden West was a marketing concept devised by Farran Zerbe to sell Western souvenir gold tokens in San Francisco during 1915 and 1916? Perhaps you should be clear about things. Do you or don't you accept prior research and documentation on this fact??
Here's what I find puzzling: You'd like to dismiss the known involvement of Zerbe as "speculation" but want to accept "speculation" about Mrs. Mary E. Hart's involvement as fact. It doesn't seem logical to have it both ways.
I know this has been repeated by many people over the years, but I haven't seen any primary research material definitively making the linkage. Have you?
Here's something from Koller which isn't definitive to me. Do you think this is proof, or do you have some other period evidence to refer to?
This seems it could occur by simply calling the same frame dealer. I know it's something I would do if I wanted to do something similar, and I'm actually thinking about it to make a display like O'Dowd's
I mention both are speculation
Please (re-)read my post above:
Maybe you call each speculation but it's your inference is clear, one is fact and you choose to dismiss the other.
Maybe you should do a little more research on M.E. Hart, Mrs. Mary E. Hart and Farran Zerbe. I have done mine on Zerbe and my verdict is well established. Not much can be found on M.E. Hart, so that leaves you to follow down the rabbit hole with the Mrs., something it seems you have already undertaken with earnest. Good luck and please keep us posted. I'll do some extra digging and do the same.
Absent any new information I'll stick with what I already know.
I'm not dismissing anything. Please don't read anything more into my posts than is in them.
Please post any info you find. That would be great! I've been posting most of the primary, period research material in this thread, so I'm looking forward your posts with primary research material as well!
William D. Hyder posted back in 2013 that he believes Joseph Mayer, Zerbe, and Hart could all be involved!
To my knowledge there are about 15 known to exist in the copper frame. I have only ever seen 2. It is the same frame used for the on pc set that had the $50 octagonal.
Just the Frame for harts gold set sold at heritage for around 6k I believe. This was over 10 years ago
My bad it was $5k
There are slight varieties known and films graded has a fair amount of documentation
Great info and memory! Thanks for posting it.
I wonder if there are only 2 frames remaining now.
And what the survivor population is for these?
Here's the link:
https://coins.ha.com/itm/-/a/1216-6671.s
There are at least 3 frames and 2 with coins that I am aware of. Some one may have bought that frame and put coins back in it.
My grand father has one with the coins in his collection.
Ah very nice! I bet it's awesome to hold an entire set in it's original case from over 100 years ago!
I'm wondering if the empty frame used to house the Fred Holabird collection. That seems plausible since that came as a complete set and I haven't seen anyone trying to assemble this as a set.
Yeah it is pretty cool. I’nthe 60,s my grandfather was in a news paper
article and we was holding it in the photo that was put in the paper. Makes it kinda cool. The back looks like this. A single label on the bottom left.
Sounds great!
Do you have a copy of the newspaper article? It would be great to add to this thread
Somewhere. I will try to did it out
This newspaper article is really cool!
Your grandfather is on the front page too!
Here's the full newspaper article rotated.
Just from the pictures posted in this thread already it looks like there are three different dies for EACH of:
Montana obverse;
Montana reverse;
Idaho obverse;
Idaho reverse.
Based on this and the style of engraving it is apparent that all the dies were individually hand-engraved.
I’m pretty sure they came in 3 sizes which makes sense for the dies we're seeing.
Well, that would explain it.
I tried to arrange the SlabView photos so they go from largest to smallest coin (smallest to largest prong size in normalized photos).
Amazing set @Ktp! Thanks for posting all the info and photos!
Candidate No. 4 --- On April 26th, 1916, the San Jose Evening News wrote that Mrs. Marie Hart was reportedly awakened at 4 o'clock in the morning and found a burglar at work in her room at the Chesterfield Apartments, 560 Powell street. She jumped out of bed and made a rush at the thief, but the burglar beat her to the door and ran out into the street.
Thus she stepped forward into the light, as the most promising candidate for the long lost token dealer. Marie Hart was at the right place, at the right time and had the correct first initial and last name.
Did Mrs. Marie Hart like Mr. Fera work for Shreve & Co? A follow-up search through five contemporary newspapers for additional information about the attempted burglary, revealed no further news reports. At this point, a subsequent search through genealogy records has failed to yield anything of value.
Coins of the Golden West: Thus we began to look back and wonder if Marie Hart was a reporter's misinterpretation of Mary E. Hart. She certainly had the personality of someone who would chase a burglar from her room. Even though the apartments appear to have been upscale, they did have a transitory nature to them. On the other hand, if this was true, why didn't the reporter identify her as the so-called first lady of Alaska? She was well known to the press having written and or appeared in dozens of news items over the years.
We did find that Mary E. Hart, the journalist had spent the first four months of 1916 in Missouri visiting relatives before returning sometime in April to Corte Madera. In 1916, she listed her in town address as the Palace Hotel. Thus Mary E. and Marie Hart could have been two separate individuals.
Coincidentally, in a 1920 San Francisco Commonwealth Club membership list, the name of T.W.H. Shanahan, Superintendent of the San Francisco Branch Mint, can be found listed at the 560 Powell Street address. Just who was the proprietor of the M.E. Hart Co.? The evidence points to Farran Zerbe, along with the assistance or namesake of Mary E. Hart, Bruno Fera, Marie Hart, or a combination of the preceding names? However, like William Hyder we have not yet found the fabled "smoking gun" that positively identifies that person or persons.
Good info @Maywood!
This looks like it's from an article by Mike Locke and Dan Owens posted in this thread back in May.
Mike and Dan postulate 4 candidates in their 2 part series "Will The Real M.E. Hart Please Stand Up?"
The candidates are:
It seems like the Zerbe theory is best documented by Brian Koller of MEHartGold.com who provides reasoning and period research here:
M.E. Hart's Coins of the Golden West and selected other popular Western souvenir gold series
https://www.filmsgraded.com/mehart/index.htm
Mary Elizabeth Hart was postulated by Jeff Shevlin and William D. Hyder with Bill writing this up in an article in 2013 also posted here back in May:
Mary E. Hart and M. E. Hart’s Coins of the Golden West
https://holabirdamericana.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/mary-e-hart-and-m-e-harts-coins-of-the-golden-west-by-william-d-hyder/
The candidates Bruno Ferdinand Fera and Mrs. Marie Hart seem to be from Mike Locke and Dan Owens who published their findings in 2015 looking up people associated with the 560 Powell St., San Francisco address and finding that Fera was employed by Shreve & Co. in San Francisco, the firm that made the copper frame. This is in the article Will The Real M.E. Hart Please Stand Up? as mentioned.
The candidates of Fera and Marie Hart by Mike Locke and Dan Owens are interesting, however, I wish Mike and Dan would have included primary source material in their article, like provided by Brian Koller and in this thread. Can anyone find the article regarding the burglary on 560 Powell in the April 26th, 1916 issue of the San Jose Evening News or any material for the other information they reference? Hopefully, the information in the article by Mike Locke and Dan Owens can be supplemented with primary source material.
This dealer has their Facebook page heading with the harts set image
This is Premier Rare Coins, LLC, Jeffrey Behan's company. For tracing purposes, it's useful to include both dealers as well as collectors, so this set is pedigreed to both Fred Holabird and Jeffrey Behan now.
Oh my bad. I reached out to Fred back in 2017. He said he sold 4 or 5 sets in the frame and has seen about 10 sets in the frame. That is where I get the 15 number. Who knows if any of those were the same set seen or sold multiple times.
It is a shame the frame only that sold doesn’t have a picture of the back. The labels are numbered. Not sure what they mean but my grand fathers has a 1 and 2 and the eBay one has a 5 & 9 on the label.
Great info. Over time, the more sales that are documented online, the better, especially with specimens going through CoinFacts and TrueViews.
That's very interesting. I wonder what they mean as well.
This was an interesting foray into archived material to attempt an identification, made difficult by the passage of time and the nature of some of the people involved. It's hard for me not to be cynical about the whole origin of these interesting jewelry tokens, but after re-reading the whole thread that's where I end up. The images are also interesting since they show different dies used for tokens which were struck in low numbers. My final assessment is that we'll probably never know the circumstances around the owners of the company and when/who struck the tokens.
I'm happy I always avoided them.
For $35,000 they (originals) must be struck in gold, correct?
Nevermind. The newspaper on page 2 said they are made of gold.
Potential new variety discovery from Old West Gold!
Hope Brian Koller of MEHarGold.com is able to comment on this and indicate if this is a new variety or not!
Ref: https://www.ebay.com/itm/305459820743
Here's an original 1909 AYPE box from Old West Gold:
Here's a description of the set from AU Capital Management, LLC (Russell Augustin) with a good passage on Mary Elizabeth Hart:
Ref: https://www.aucm.com/1849-1915-hart-s-coins-of-the-golden-west-36pc-set-in-tiffany-frame.html
Here's the full description.