Hawaiian hub impressions in Heritage auction...
MrEureka
Posts: 24,270 ✭✭✭✭✭
These 1883 hub impressions in the upcoming Heritage auction have been certified by PCGS as "Circa 1900". I don't doubt the "Circa 1900" part, but I have no idea how they came to that conclusion. Can anyone here shed some light on this? Also, does anyone here know where and/or by whom these things were made?
Andy Lustig
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
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The complete set of ten uniface obverse and reverse hub trials struck in bronze for the 1883 coinage of Hawaii is believed to be unique.
The existence of the set has been well-known and published for over forty-five years: Maurice Gould and Kenneth Bressett referred to their pioneering 1960 Catalogue of Hawaiian Coins, Tokens and Paper Money [1961]; later, Gordon Medcalf and Robert Fong noted it in their Hawaiian Money and Medals [1967]; and later still its existence has been noted by Donald Medcalf and Ronald Russell, in their essential Standard Catalogue of Hawaiian Money: A set of hub impressions exists. [p. 41, 1991 edition].
Additionally, the consignor has supplied to Superior Galleries a copy of a letter to Gordon Medcalf and Robert Fong [September 29, 1972] which refers to the currently offered lot, and notes that the set had previously been acquired from Mel Kane in 1957.
Prior to that it has been suggested that the set was within the extraordinary numismatic cache left by Charles Barber on his death in 1917. And indeed, it is precisely this type of item that Barber found appealing. Many of the original papers of Charles Barber were given to the National Coin Collection at the Smithsonian Institution by Stack's; simultaneously copies were made and deposited with both the American Numismatic Society and American Numismatic Association libraries. In 'The Personal Notebooks of Charles Barber', it is noted that he owned a set of Hawaiian coins, but there is nothing to indicate what form this set took. But the existence of a second set has never even been rumored.
Claus Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, Germany in 1828, and came to the United States twenty years later where he worked in a grocery in Charleston, South Carolina. Spreckels was a man of talent, vision, and lofty ambitions: by 1855 he owned his own grocery in New York, and soon cast his eye west. Although the headiest days of California Gold Rush had passed, there was still money to be made. In fact, more men made lasting fortunes from providing supplies to the forty-niners than those who submitted to the backbreaking work in the goldfields.
By 1856 he had bought out his brother's grocery business, and by 1857 (the same year that what was to become the SS Central America's last gold shipment set sail for Panama), he had established the Albany Brewery in San Francisco.
Spreckels soon advanced from hops to sugar and opened a sugar refinery. He quickly realized he didn't fully understand the business, and after two years sold out. He then traveled to Europe to learn the sugar beet refining business from the ground up as a workman. When he returned to California a few years later, he established the California Sugar Refining Company.
Sugar was a burgeoning industry in Hawaii at the time, and was soon to replace the fading sandalwood and the shattered whaling industries as a primary source of revenue. The relaxation of land ownership laws in the late 1840s permitted private ownership, and speculators (primarily from the mainland) rushed in to fill the void. As recently as 25 years ago, 97% of Hawaii's real estate was owned by only 40 individuals. Hawaii's trade pact with the United States, negotiated by King Kalakaua while in Washington D.C. from the Grant Administration in 1875, and signed in 1876, effectively provided Hawaii with the most favored trade status over sugar. Spreckels recognized the potential threat to his California sugar business and headed to the islands. First, he bought half of 1877 sugar crop before the prices soared, and then began to purchase thousands of acres of arid land on Maui. His next challenge would be acquiring the water rights to irrigate the land.
Although Spreckels all but had an agreement worked out with the government, his impatience with bureaucracy brought him to his poker playing buddy: King Kalakaua I.
Born David Kalakaua in 1836 to Hawaiian nobility, he worked his way up through the ranks of the Hawaiian government and became the leader of the 'Young Hawaiians' whose ironically prescient motto was, 'Hawaii for the Hawaiians.' He was elected King in 1874.
Well-traveled and educated, Kalakaua I actively encouraged a revival of Hawaiian culture (including the hula). He enjoyed his poker games, and it is said that at one of these games Spreckels influenced the King into backing his proposals. Eventually, a 30 mile ditch system was built which brought as much as 50 million gallons of water a day to Spreckels land. By 1882 he was shipping 24 tons of sugar to the mainland.
Over time, Spreckels became one of the King's intimates, and newspapers referred to him as 'the power behind the throne' and as 'His Majesty Spreckels.'
As Hawaii's economy boomed, the entrepreneurial Spreckels soon suggested to Kalakaua that a coin bearing his likeness be struck. Undoubtedly the suggestion appealed to the King's vanity and Spreckels, acting as agent for the Hawaiian government contracted with the Philadelphia Mint to for the work to be done. An Act of Congress (January 29, 1874) gave the Mint authorization to produce coins for foreign countries (it must be remembered that Hawaii was still a sovereign nation at this time, although American policy interests were very much on the ascendant).
The design motifs and the motto: UA MAU KE EA O KA AINA I KA PONO (THE LIFE OF THE LAND IS PRESERVED IN RIGHTEOUSNESS), were provided by Spreckels to the Mints Chief Engraver Charles Barber, who then set to work.
Barber, although justifiably censured by numismatists for his contentious battles with Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the bland design concepts of the series of coinages that bear his name, was nevertheless an engraver of considerable technical proficiency. Barber caught the likeness of the King in a most flattering light. Probably working from photographs of the exuberantly bewhiskered Kalakaua, Barber's efforts are indeed commendable.
Around the King's head reads the legend, KLAKAUA I KING OF HAWAII; and below the head the date [but the hub trials in this lot, being working process strikes for the engravers guidance are not dated. The date would have been punched directly into the working dies].
The reverse designs for the coinage were simple and straightforward: all carried the motto noted above around the periphery, as well as the denominations name in Hawaiian. The designs varied slightly:
The Umi Keneta [ten cents] bore the denomination 10 CENTS within a crown wreath.
The Hapawalu [eighth dollar, or 12 1/2 cents], which was ultimately not adopted, and is known from only 20 proofs struck, [and the hub trial strikes in the current lot] bore the denomination in Hawaiian within the wreath, and in English around the periphery.
The Hapaha [25 cents] and the Hapalua [50 cents] bore crowned Hawaiian Coats-of-arms, flanked by the denomination expressed either as 1/4CD or 1/2CD respectively flanking the shield.
Finally the Akahi Dala [dollar], bore the same crowned shield but within a mantle, and again flanked by the denomination expressed as 1CD.
It was a fairly inspired series of coins which, once the hapawalu was eliminated, corresponded precisely to United States coins circulating at that time. This lowered production costs, and also further included Hawaii in the American sphere of influence.
When Barber completed the dies, they were sent to the San Francisco Mint where the entire mintage was struck between November 1883 and June 1884. A total of ,000,000 face value was authorized for striking. Although it was a successful coinage, of the original mintage of 1,950,000 pieces in all denominations, 1,323,346 were redeemed at face value and melted down after Hawaii became a United States Territory.
This is just idle speculation, but perhaps when the Mint moved from the second location to the third location c. 1900 the hubs were discovered in the old die vault (what else was in there????) and a set of impressions made prior to the hubs being destroyed rather than moved? If this were the case, somebody might have made note of that in a document that passed down with the impressions.
Just a WAG. My Wayback Machine is in the shop for repairs, so I can't go back and check.
TD
Cool item.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Much appreciated.
Best.
All offered raw without any numerical grade with the exception that they had been designated as Proof strikings.
Prices realized skip these so either their reserve was not meet or most likely they had been removed from the auction prior to crossing the podium.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]