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doctored coins of long ago
wev
Posts: 144 ✭✭✭
Assuming the c 1859 Harper's Weekly article on False Coins is known here, are there any recorded examples of the practice of disemboweling known?
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wev
Posts: 144 ✭✭✭
wev
Posts: 144 ✭✭✭
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If you're speaking of coins that were hollowed out and filled with platinum, here's an old thread on the subject:
Link to thread on filled coins
Check out the Southern Gold Society
than it would be worth. Cheers, RickO
I have read these stories about how gold coins were debased by slicing them in half, hollowing out the center and replacing the center with platinum. Yet, I've also read that no one has ever found a piece that has had that treatment. Does anyone know if such a debased gold coin has ever been found?
Calling CaptHenway......
Link to thread on filled coins
link redux.
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ricko, when you are homeless, starving, alone, criminalistic, being threated, slavery etc, what is "worth" doing changes dramatically.
i presume a huge amount of counterfeit items across many fields come to be for just such reasons.
apologize for the ot nature of my post for this cool and scarcely talked about (here) topic.
.
I have read these stories about how gold coins were debased by slicing them in half, hollowing out the center and replacing the center with platinum. Yet, I've also read that no one has ever found a piece that has had that treatment. Does anyone know if such a debased gold coin has ever been found?
Calling CaptHenway......
Never seen one.
However, I have heard of fake gold sovereigns being made with a platinum core and gold on the outside. Late 1800's I believe.
The NYT article was featured in an article in the January 2016 issue of The Numismatist.
Check out the Southern Gold Society
Cleveland Morning Leader
February 28, 1859
Sub-Treasury Counting--False Coin.
Harper's Weekly gives a very interesting account of a visit to the United States Sub-Treasury in that city, and what is seen and done there. The money as received goes into the Sub Treasury, and passes through the hands of Messrs. Birdsall and Cisco to be counted and tested. So much of the gold and silver coin in circulation has been sweated, or filed, or bored, or disemboweled, that it requires more than common tact and skill to detect many of the impositions. We quote as follows :
The gentlemen who do the counting for the Sub-treasury, count with both hands. When a $5000 bag is emptied before them, they plunge both hands simultaneously into the glittering mass, and withdraw each with a coin between the thumb and forefinger. Their sense of ear is so acute that if, in pouring out the contents of a bag, a spurious coin happens to strike against the counter, they will detect and denounce it though they may happen to be many yards distant For the proportion of alloy they rely in some degree on the eye, which is so trained, that the least imperfection is at once discovered. It is the sense of touch which serves to detect sweated or filed coins.
Latterly, spurious gold coins have generally belonged to one of two kinds. They have either been sweated by a new process, or they have been disemboweled. The new sweating process consists of filing off the edges of the coin, and then remilling it The old sweating plan was simply to rub the face ot the coin on a file till it was smooth; this method is now obsolete, as even the bank will not take a sweated piece. But by taking an eagle and filing off the milled edge carefully, a rogue may, if he be careful, get $1.50 worth of gold from a $20 dollar piece, and, by remilling it with care, may leave it so perfect, that it is impossible for a person not trained to the business to detect the fraud. These coin are instantly detected at the Sub-treasury and rejected. The disemboweling process is different. A short time since some ingenious counterfeiters undertook to make money by sawing dollar coins in two, scooping out the inside, filling the hollows with base metal, and rejoining the pieces with so much skill that no trace of the operation was outwardly visible. This was done with the small thick dollar issued by the mint to a very great extent. Sixty cents of geld was taken from each dollar, and many thousand dollars were subjected to the process. Many of these disemboweled dollar are in circulation at the present moment. At the Sub-Treasury the skilled ear and hand of Mr. Birdsall and his assistant, quickly detect them. Larger coins are not split. By an ingenious contrivance a hole is bored into their edge and the inside is scooped out without abrading the milling. After a third or so of the gold is abstracted, the cavity is filled with base metal, the opening is galvanized with gold, and the piece is set in circulation. These coins are so difficult to distinguish from coins fresh from the mint that there are not half a dozen persons in the United States who can discern that they have been tampered with. Mr. Birdsall, we are told, singles them out with unerring accuracy and, to the amazement of the bank from which they came, reject them. A few weeks since, the police was set on the track of a woman who was engaged in passing coins altered in this way. One of the most acute detectives was set on her track, and every license was afforded her in order, if possible, to discover the factory where the nice operation of boring and filling these coins was performed. Unfortunately, some zealous but thick-headed policeman got wind of the lady's performance and, by arresting her prematurely, defeated the aim of his superior officer. '
Messrs. Birdsall and Cisco, Jun., count several hundred thousand dollars every day. When they have gone through a bag, they shovel the coin into a funnel and transfer them to a bag, which is instantly tied and sealed, not to be opened till its contents are required for disbursement.
Back in the 1980s, a dealer friend offered me a nice EF Dahlonega $5 from the early 1840s at a screamingly cheap price. But he told me to make sure and examine all three sides to the coin. Yes, it had been drilled through the outside reeding in 4 places. Two of the holes were empty, and the other two showed a white metal rod inside, probably platinum.
No doubt the holes had been 'capped' at one time to make the deception complete. The drilled holes were not large in diameter, so I would guess the yield for the coin doctor might have been 25c worth of gold, tops.