Anyone know where they sourced the gold for pre-1834 US coins?
topstuf
Posts: 14,803 ✭✭✭✭✭
I'm sure someone does.
Just curious if it was melted foreign coins or mines down there in the South.
??
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Imagine (and guessing, looking forward to educated answers) that it was mostly melted foreign (Spanish, French, Dutch, etc)
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
****WE BUY GOLD! ** ** .....sign on Mint in 1795
TOP PRICES PAID.
"Until the 1820s, there was no significant known source of native gold in the United States. Bullion to make quarter eagles, half eagles, and eagles came from a variety of origins, including foreign gold coins melted down (an important source), bullion from Central and South America, and the reduction of various wrought items such as jewelry. By the 1820s, gold discoveries in North Carolina became important. In 1838 mints were established at Dahlonega, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, to produce coins from bullion found in those areas.
From August 1, 1834, through the late 1840s, gold coins were produced in fair quantities at Philadelphia, then subsequently in Charlotte, Dahlonega, and the additional branch mint at New Orleans. Supplies of gold primarily came from Georgia and North Carolina, with amounts coming from international payments, the melting down of foreign coins, and other traditional sources." Q. David Bowers
From this PCGS article: http://www.pcgs.com/News/Gold-Coins-Their-History
Baley said it right that the earliest gold for our Mint came from
other countries like England, France, Holland, Spain & Mexico.
Later gold was found in Georgia & N. Carolina. By 1838 a branch mint
was opened at Dahlonega Georgia & Charlotte N. Carolina. Then
in 1848 the big one at Sutter's mill California.
Many of these stories can be found in Q. David Bowers book
United States Gold Coins An Illustrated History
Also a wealth of information can be found in Roger W. Burdette's
Book From Mine to Mint, which covers the period extensively.
R.I.P. Bear
The Mint did not "source" the gold that they struck. They struck the gold that was brought to it.
A good chunk of the gold came from the fields in Southern Appalachia. it was the arduous task of getting the gold from those very rural locations safely to the Philly mint that brought on the calls to build mints in Dahlonega, Charlotte and N'orleans.
There were deposits and mines from the Colonial era; I remember Governor Winthrop (not Bradford) if memory serves writing about uncovering gold in a field he was plowing. http://goldminingandprospecting.blogspot.com/2012/05/john-winthrop-younger-and-gold-rings.html The Reed mine stretched back to around 1800: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Gold_Mine Of course the Indians had little use for gold, copper was far more functional.
If someone wants to GO LARGE on this, gold, silver, etc. have trace elements that are unique to their source. It is used to map the movement of gold items. For example, a BCE burial site in England had a body with 2 gold hair pieces. One of them was spectral analyzed to being native to the region. The other one was from Northern Spain, quite a distance in 2000 BC or so. Showed evidence of trade routes. Similar to raw Uranium (plutonium, etc.) and reactor (or weapons grade) Uranium, Plutonium, etc. have unique markers in them.
Even melted down, these trace elements remain. If it is a mixed lot, probably very common back then, by analyzing the parts, one could deduce it was 8 parts from Peru, 12 parts from Northern Mexico, 1 part from Austria, and 3 parts from Northern Spain.
What I do not have access to, is if anyone has ever built the Rosetta Stone for Silver and Gold. It would not be THAT difficult to build, using original coins that were regional (Charlotte, Dahlonega, local coins from the early gold rush in California and Alaska, assuming the gold did not come from elsewhere. It would also need original coins from Mexico, Central and South America, etc. European might be a bit tougher, as the stuff probably has been melted and remelted countless times, but samples from the original mines might be available.
Not sure what could be done with this, although, first though could be used by PCGS, etc. for counterfeit detection. For example, am 1893-S Morgan in MS66 might merit a silver check, that should not show coming from 1950's US 90%.
Again, I am not that familiar with the gold & silver side, my work was on the reactor / bomb side.
Okay, okay..... I meant where did they GIT it?
The sources of most gold for early US coinage came from melted foreign coins and modest amounts of Mexican bullion smuggled out of Spanish, then Mexican, national control. Output of U.S. mines was negligible.
(Materials are obtained from a source, they are not "sourced" like a chicken entree is "sauced.")
This is a terrific idea. If an academic group wanted to make the effort to collate the trace metals associated with gold from various sources in a systematic way, I'd support that effort. Fred Holabird has talked in the past about regional differences in trace metals associated with gold found within California.
I have an 1848 Philly $10 that has the rosy color of California gold and I'd love to get it tested one day by some nondestructive trace element analysis. I don't know if the hand-held XRF guns are accurate enough for this.
The southern gold rush started circa 1828. Prior to that almost all of gold that went into U.S. coins came from foreign sources. After that increasing amounts of gold that went into U.S. coins was from the southern gold fields and by 1849, California.
I wonder where they got the gold for the 1848 "CAL" quarter eagle ?
They must have sourced it from other than foreign coins.
Commerce. People brought it to the door of the Mint, or shipped it there via an express company. Tobacco, sugar, lumber (including tall tree trunks for European navy mainmasts) and cotton (or whatever) growers sold their goods to Europe and sometimes got paid in gold coin that they deposited at the Mint. The customs houses collected import tariffs on imported goods and if it was paid in foreign gold (some of it legal tender in the U.S.) sent it to the Mint to be recoined. Jewelers bought in scrap gold and gold teeth and sent it to the Mint to be monetized.
Look up the Smithson Bequest.
I guess it's possible that some California gold made it to Philadelphia before the end of 1848, but the famous "Tea Caddy" of 230 oz arrived in Washington in early Dec. 1848. (1848 'CAL' quarter eagles). It was fast tracked across Mexico and up through New Orleans to make it in time for Pres. Polk to have proof of California gold for his State of the Union address on Dec. 5, 1848. Up until that moment most people on the eastern seaboard considered the rumors of Calif. gold a hoax (humbug). Polk really lit the fuse for the rush of 1849-53. If your eagle could be proven to be Calif. gold, well that would be extremely cool.
I agree it would be cool, but the quantity of gold in that first shipment at least would appear to be fully accounted for by the CAL quarter eagles and the two gold medals made for Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, if those medals were in fact 20oz. each (!) Ron Guth's Coinfacts description has a nice summary. I'm cribbing this from a poster named 'michael', since banned:
Taylor Medal (known weight) = 621 grams
Scott Medal (assumed weight) = 621 grams
1,389 "CAL" Quarter Eagles (4.18 grams each) = 5,806 grams
Total weight = 7,048 grams
7,048 grams equals 226.6 troy ounces -- tantalizingly close to
the amount of gold sent by Marcy!"
So if it was California gold, it would have had to show up and get minted in the last three weeks or so of December, 1848.
A side note- that first shipment of gold was delivered across the country by a man named Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who happens to be the coolest historical figure evah in my opinion. Check him out on Wikipedia sometime if you're curious. I can think of few others, to include Kit Carson, who have seen or participated in quite the swath of Western history as Mr. Beale.
Many interesting responses in this thread. In Alaska much of the gold that is found is in nugget form and there is an incentive to not melt it as it brings much more as nuggets. I am curious if this was also true in the past. The gold flakes from the open pit mines in Nevada as they operate today are melted into gold bars from the inception. I am guessing that to some degree the form the gold was found in dictated to some extent whether it made it into coins even during the period identified by the OP.
Thanks, Bill. But is that thoroughly backed up by documents? What then happened to gold that was discovered in north America? Did it all go to jewelry or end up in poured bars owned by private individuals?
I have had Q. David Bowers book on gold for years and find it to be an excellent source of gold history. I highly recommend it as very informative and interesting to read. Cheers, RickO
From what I have read all of the gold that went into the 1848 CAL. quarter eagles came for the 230 ounces in the tea catty that Lucian Lozier brought from California. The gold that went into the Scott and Taylor gold medals was made from a second shipment that arrived in Washington a couple days after Lozier delivered his package.
The Lozier California gold was not mixed with other gold deposits. The Philadelphia Mint processed that 230 ounces of ore by itself so that only California gold was in the coins. That delayed the processing of the shipment, and the mint director at the time explained that the delay was caused a conscious effort to product the coins only from that first California gold shipment.
My information is based upon various sources including the classic article that R.S. Yeoman wrote in the late 1940s for The Numismatist and later published research for authoritative sources such as Q. David Bowers.
People need to understand that the California gold discovery was so huge that it changed the landscape for precious metals to great degree in the mid 19th century. There was so much new gold on the market that it forced a change in the relative values of gold and silver which requited a reduction in the weight of the U.S. silver coinage that was then in circulation. That is why arrows were placed beside the date and rays around the eagle on the 1853 silver coinage. The weight of the silver dollar was not changed in some sort of misguided attempt to maintain its financial integrity. All that did was to drive the coin out of circulation to an even greater degree than before.
FWIW, here's the coin I'm claiming has a "California" look to it:
Contrast that with the clearly green-gold look of coins from earlier in the decade:
Here is an 1838 CAL. quarter eagle that has original surfaces. This coin grades AU-55
And here is a "regular" 1848 quarter eagle that was made from gold from other sources. This was has an NGC AU-58, CAC grade.
With all due respect, I don't think that your 1848 eagle could have California gold in it unless the 1848 dies were used to strike coins in 1849. The first shipment of California gold arrived in early December 1848. The 1848 CAL. quarter eagles were probably struck in late December 1848 or early January of 1849.
Prior to 1804 there were no deposits of gold mined in the United
States but this changed on May 25, 1804. Two individuals, John
Phifer and Richard Trotter, brought in a total of more than $8,000
in gold ingots. The source of the bullion was Cabarrus County, North
Carolina. In all there was $11,000 deposited that year from North
Carolina.
After 1804 the amounts varied but Southern gold did not become
significant until the 1820s. Otherwise the sources were primarily
foreign gold, which meant mainly Spanish and Portuguese. In the
early 1830s Southern gold made up a considerable part of the gold
deposits made at the Mint.
As a small additional note, in his 1898 book on the history of California, Theodore Hittell
reported that gold had been discovered near Los Angeles in early 1842 and that at least
one deposit of this gold was sent to the Philadelphia Mint later that year. This appears
to have been the first deposit of California gold at the Mint.
Why would it not have been sent to one of the more convenient Mexican Mints, since California was still a part of Mexico?
The gold was sent in by Abel Stearns, perhaps an American living temporarily in California.
It weighed 18 ounces.