Was the goal of Paul Franklin and the "Massapequa Mint" to enable private ownership of gold?

Zoins

I just ran across the following on E-Sylum which I thought was interesting:

RULAU'S JOHN J. FORD OBITUARY, PART II
E-Sylum: Volume 9, Number 14, April 2, 2006, Article 35
http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v09n14a35.html

PAUL FRANKLIN AND THE "MASSAPEQUA MINT"
Trained as an engineer, Paul Franklin was an expert tool and die maker. From 1933 until 1975 it was illegal for Americans to hold gold unless it had a numismatic premium .... but bullion traded in the black market. Colonial coin dealer Richard Picker dubbed the activities of Ford and Franklin 'the Massapequa Mint.' Ford lived in Rockville Centre and Franklin in nearby Massapequa.

Insider2

All during the time we were not allowed to own gold bullion, it was available. I lusted after the Saudi gold coins struck by the US Mint for the oil company. They remain my all-time favorite Mint issue surpassed only by the 1907 HR $20.

IMHO, they are unappreciated and underpriced! Basically, round U.S. gold ingots and a neat story to them.

RogerB

No. The purpose was to defraud wealthy collectors with invented tales and large quantities of moldy bologna.

Maybe I can get my Saudi Gold article in print soon....I hope.

Zoins

The Philadephia Mint Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO) gold sovereigns are neat. It would be great to read more about them. Are there any estimated survivor numbers?

RogerB

There was no connection to ARAMCO.

Zoins

@RogerB said:
There was no connection to ARAMCO.

If this is the case, we may need your article to debunk this since a lot of sources claim a relationship.

Here's an excerpt from the 1991 New York Times article "Coins".

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/14/news/coins.html

For a time the Saudis accepted payment in United States currency, but by 1945 they were insisting that the payments in gold be resumed. Aramco sought help from the United States Government. Faced with the prospect of either a cutoff of substantial amounts of Middle Eastern oil or a huge increase in the price of Saudi crude, the Government minted 91,120 large gold disks adorned with the American eagle and the words "U.S. Mint -- Philadelphia."

Aramco paid for the minting and the bullion. The coins were shipped off to Saudi Arabia.

These bullion coins weighed 493.1 grains, slightly more than a troy ounce, and were 91 2/3 percent gold and 8 1/3 percent copper. The fineness was that of the British sterling system then current in the Middle East. The United States standard was only 90 percent gold.

Although some Aramco employees reported seeing the coins in circulation in the late 1940's, even using them as poker chips, the coins were not widely circulated. Islamic law discourages images and most Saudi coins are adorned with only Arabic script as decoration. The eagle with its wings spread wide must have been a startling sight to Saudi Arabia's more orthodox Muslims.

But most of the coins disappeared for more temporal reasons. The bullion coins were crated and shipped to Bombay, where the $35-an-ounce American gold was sold for $70 an ounce. Most of the coins were melted into bars and later sold in Macao.

In 1947, Aramco contracted for 121,364 smaller bullion coins with the same design, but weighing just 123.27 grains. Those coins actually saw some popular use in Saudi Arabia and traded for about $12, or 40 silver Saudi riyals. But the popularity declined after Swiss and Lebanese counterfeiters began striking coins that were similar but less valuable.

Here are some other links:

• https://www.sterlingcurrency.com.au/research/aramco-gold-“sovereign”-1947

RogerB

The article is incorrect in nearly all respects.

The concession was always paid in sovereigns - that was part of the contract. The US had a large supply of sovereigns.

ARAMCO employees were paid in silver, only. Never gold.

Zoins

Do any existing articles debunk the ARAMCO connection? If not, will you include this topic in your article?

Here's another post on these forums:

• https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/262950/aramco-gold

RogerB

No, they don't. That's because every prior author has copied from the same incorrect and speculative sources.

My approach is to go to original material and archives, including some in Arabic. The draft article - it's always a draft for me until published - is 21 pages, but it will probably get a little longer when I revise and improved explanations of events. But, there is no point in "debunking" something that was not true form the beginning - the article itself will take care of that.

Zoins

Can't wait to read it

RogerB

Here's a tiny snippet from near the beginning of the article.

Coinosaurus

@RogerB said:
No. The purpose was to defraud wealthy collectors with invented tales and large quantities of moldy bologna.

Maybe I can get my Saudi Gold article in print soon....I hope.

You could effectively hold bullion gold by purchasing common date $20s, there was no need to make up funny stories if you simply wanted to own gold.

The fakes sold into the Lilly collection were sold at extraordinary premiums over melt - there was much more money to be made there.

Zoins

Where any of the fakes discovered while Paul Gerow Franklin, Sr. (May 24, 1919 - March 13, 2000) and John J. Ford Jr. (March 5, 1924 – July 7, 2005) where still living?

breakdown

Read Moulton's book - it is all there. Eric Newman figured out what was going on and called them on it very early on. Ford blustered and threatened suit and intimidated many big names but a few people - prominently Eric Newman and others -- sought the truth. A lot of money was made off forgeries, mostly from some wealthy collectors who trusted the wrong people.

ricko

Well this is very interesting... I have long known of the Saudi gold tokens... and although I have looked for them at coin shows, I never did see one. @RogerB ... I look forward to your article and I hope some pictures as well.
Always great to see myths supplanted by diligent, factual research. Cheers, RickO

BigMoose

The book by Karl Moulton is really fantastic. It paints a grim picture about the sleazy underbelly of numismatics.

CaptHenway

@RogerB said:
No. The purpose was to defraud wealthy collectors with invented tales and large quantities of moldy bologna.

THIS

dbldie55

This week's E-Sylum has a nice piece on Ted Buttrey and the work he did to show these were fake.

Look for: KLEEBERG ON TED BUTTREY VS. JOHN FORD

Regulated

Moulton's book is a great resource; however, we still need to do an immense amount of research on this subject. The Moulton text is a clearing house of information, but raises many more questions than it answers.

I've spent time punch-linking bars from Lilly and The Bank of California collection, and doing this was enlightening. I also discovered the Assay Office $20 that the Ford cabal copied in order to make the so-called "prooflike Assay $20s" from, and identified the repeating depressions on the Crimped Border Miner's Bank $10s which identified them as transfer die forgeries, found the repeating depression on the fake 1861 Clark Gruber $20s, and determined that the Pacific Company $5 overstruck on a classic head $5 was also a transfer die forgery.

Ford and friends handled a LOT of fakes, but they also handled real items, some of which now suffer from guilt by association. I think that as numismatists, it is important that we remember that it is just as bad to call a real item fake as it is to pass a fake as real. It is also important to remember that a lot of the controversy about these pieces was fueled as much by personal animosity as by a desire to know the truth.

Mark

@Zoins If you haven't read the Moulton book, it's a great read. I'd rank it as one of the best numismatic books I've ever read. It's gawd-awful expensive but I wound up thinking it was worth it. Of course, if you borrow it from a library it will be LOT cheaper than buying it...

RogerB

The following might be of interest. These are only a small sample from the ODGSO files in NARA. Many of the fake western bars were laundered through various European auctions before application for a license was requested.

Mark

Goodness, I just saw on Wikipedia that Ted Buttrey passed away on Jan 9. I've not yet read the article @dbldie55 notes but I presume it was written to commemorate his death. Buttrey definitely seemed to be one of the "good guys."

FredWeinberg

That's some very interesting paperwork.

I used to drive up the the A-Mark Hollywood offices,
when I worked for Jonathon's Coins in Inglewood.

Had never heard that Markoff had bought this material
from Hanson, thru Ford.

I did examine one of those 'Proof' Assay $20's, around
that time - another Beverly Hills coin dealer owned it,
in a larger black Capitol Plastic holder - even though I
was just starting out (my 2nd or third full year as a dealer),
and my knowledge of territorial coins/bars was close to
non-existant, and that I was impressed to be able to examine
a 'Proof' of such an item, I do remember that I was suspicious,
as the lettering wasn't as sharp or crisp as it should have been,
and that they looked almost 'too perfect' - today, if I showed
you one of these, and told you it was just issued as a modern
'commemorative' from the US Mint, you'd say "looks nice";it
looked like it was made last week.

RogerB

There's a lot more in the archives.

CaptainBlunt

John J. Ford Jr. was a friend of mine. I do not own any of the bars in question, real or fake.
I know for a fact that he owned a number of bars at the time of his passing that did not show
up in the Ford sales. It is my opinion that they were deemed fake and melted. I just hope
that none of them were in fact real. I wish they had been preserved in some sort of reference set.
I agree with Regulated, Ford did handle a ton of real items too.

Regulated

I've heard it said that a Fedex package of bars disappeared from Ford and found their way to a refinery. It's a pity if that happened.

Coinosaurus

@Regulated said:
I've heard it said that a Fedex package of bars disappeared from Ford and found their way to a refinery. It's a pity if that happened.

It really is, the ideal situation would have been to put them in the Smithsonian as a reference for future study.

Regulated

@Coinosaurus said:

@Regulated said:
I've heard it said that a Fedex package of bars disappeared from Ford and found their way to a refinery. It's a pity if that happened.

It really is, the ideal situation would have been to put them in the Smithsonian as a reference for future study.

We, at least we have al the goodies in the Lilly collection.

Zoins

How many pieces were saved from destruction? At a minimum, I wished there was good photographic documentation of all the pieces, but I'm not sure how many were documented before they were melted.

This was on the market a few years ago. Is this from Franklin and Ford?

https://www.pcgs.com/cert/04776155

Zoins

Are all the counterfeits by Franklin and Ford associated with the "Franklin Hoard" or only some of them?

Regulated

I've always believed that the 1861 CG $20 fakes were from the Ford cabal - the coins have the same fabric as the other forgeries. At one point, I recall comparing the edge to one of the prooflike Assay $20s and concluding it was the same, but it was a long time ago. The majority of the CG $20s were allegedly sold to Jack Klauson by an "elderly Denver man".

ranshdow

Great thread

shorecoll

I had thought that Ford had originally just set out to prove that he could fool the rich collectors and the "experts" and that it just spooled out of control.

Regulated

@shorecoll said:
I had thought that Ford had originally just set out to prove that he could fool the rich collectors and the "experts" and that it just spooled out of control.

I think a lot of it had to do with Ford's ego, and his desire to get over on the "rubes" of the world.