The U.S. Treasury’s high-handed seizure of a 1933 St. Gaudens Double Eagle from a British dealer lured to America under false pretenses by a Secret Service Agent posing as a buyer for the coin is outrageous to me, and should be highly disturbing to you, the collector. The arrest of this dealer, Stephen Fenton, and of his American agent, Jay Parrino, on charges of allegedly possessing stolen U.S. government property is frightening to all of us.

Popular legend has long held that no 1933 Double Eagles were ever “officially” released by the U.S. Treasury, and that somehow this made them illegal to possess (other than the two specimens “officially” given by the Treasury to the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution). This is despite the fact that several 1933 $20s were publicly advertised and sold in the numismatic market between 1933 and 1944, at which point the Treasury suddenly and arbitrarily decided that they could not be sold after all, and began seizing them and destroying them!

Although most common gold coins were required to be surrendered to the U.S. Treasury at face value by the Gold Surrender Act of 1933 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, the laws specifically exempted “gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins” from the requirement, and the 1933 Double Eagle certainly qualified as a rare and unusual coin. These laws were ultimately nullified by Public Law 93-373, which made all forms of gold legal for Americans to own again and was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on August 14, 1974, and again by Executive Order 11825, promulgated by Ford on December 31, 1974.

This would appear to make the 1933 $20s legal to own now, a point arguably subject to debate and interpretation when the Treasury began seizing them in 1944. However, the Treasury now claims, without substantiation, that the 1933 $20s are actually stolen government property, a charge significantly not raised by the Treasury when two earlier victims of government seizure in the late 1940s and early 1950s sued the government for the return of their property.

Those lawsuits were conducted at a time when the Gold Surrender Act was in effect to support the Treasury’s otherwise weak position. In both cases the litigants abandoned their efforts in the face of the endless legal fees incurred in challenging Uncle Sam’s deep pockets. However, neither litigant was ever faced with the threat of criminal prosecution.
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Many U.S. numismatic items have been counterfeited or otherwise imitated over the years, some so often that authenticators such as myself are automatically suspicious of them. Near the head of this list are the Indian Peace Medals issued by the United States government from the 1790s up to 1890, of which perhaps 90% of the allegedly rare pieces are fakes.

In the other fields of numismatics, some of the lesser fakes that we see are so easy to identify that we can do it over the phone with one hand tied behind our backs. For instance, many early U.S. and Confederate banknotes have been widely reproduced in what is commonly called replica form. These replicas are similar to the genuine items, but significantly different in some important way so that the maker cannot be accused of counterfeiting with intent to deceive, an important legal point.

On the replica banknotes, the key difference is usually in the heavy, parchment-like paper used, which one replicator “antiqued” by dipping the notes in pots of tea and drying them on a clothesline in the sun, giving them a look and feel much different than the flimsy rag paper typical of the originals. When I was with the Collectors Clearinghouse department at Coin World, or later with the American Numismatic Association Certification Service in Colorado Springs, we kept a list of the commonly seen replicas in our desks, so that when people called about one of the bills we could ask them the date and denomination of it and be able to tell them the serial number of their bill from the list.

Many colonial and territorial coins were also issued in replica form before the passage of the Hobby Protection Act of 1973, and many of these had distinguishing marks such as misspelled words or incorrect designs or a cryptic “R” (for REPLICA) that made them easy to spot over the telephone. Unfortunately, when people called us about Indian peace medals, there was almost nothing we could do without seeing the pieces, as most of the fakes were originally made by the United States Mint!

An excellent article on the entire Peace Medal series written by Robert W. Julian appeared in the November, 1994 issue of COINage (q.v.). For additional information on the struck pieces in this series, the reader is referred to the Peace Medal section of Julian’s definitive “Medals of the United States Mint–The First Century, 1792-1892,” published by the Token And Medal Society and available to members of the ANA through its library at 818 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903.

To briefly summarize the history of Indian Peace Medals, the British, French and Spanish Empires had each produced elaborate pieces of various sizes to present to Chiefs of varying importance whose tribes were friendly to their respective causes. Upon achieving independence with the help of certain tribes, and faced with the hostile opposition of other tribes who had been paid or persuaded to oppose the independence movement, the young American government quickly decided to continue the practice of gifting medals to native American chieftains it considered to be its friends.
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By Thomas K. DeLorey – Courtesy of Harlan J Berk

For a small State, Connecticut has played a large role in the field of colonial American numismatics. Besides being known for its wealth of pre- and post- Revolutionary paper issues, its most famous coins are the Higley Coppers of 1737-39 and the Connecticut Coppers of 1785-89.

Photos used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries

The Higley coppers were issued by Dr. Samuel Higley and his heirs, using virtually pure copper from a mine they owned near Granby, CT. Higley’s first token issue bore the picture of a deer with the inscription THE. VALVE. OF. THREE. PENCE. on one side, with three crowned hammers, the date 1737 and the inscription CONNECTICVT on the other. It is arguable as to which side should be considered the obverse, but common usage calls the side with the deer the obverse.

The next issue used the same obverse plus a similar reverse with I AM GOOD COPPER replacing CONNECTICVT. Perhaps someone objected to the use of the name of the state on an unauthorized private token. Someone certainly objected to the value Higley placed on the piece, which was no heavier than an English half pence of the period and sometimes lighter, and his third issue saw the deer side changed to VALVE. ME. AS. YOU. PLEASE. A second die saw VALVE spelled as VALUE. Both include the Roman numeral III beneath the deer, thereby hinting at the value that Higley hoped they would pass at.

Higley died in 1737 while escorting a load of his copper to England, and the mine was taken over by his brother, John. John was presumably responsible for a fourth issue that paired the Deer/III obverse with an undated reverse that bore a hatchet with the inscription J. CUT. MY. WAY. THROUGH., and a similar issue that bore the date 1739 below the hatchet. A sixth issue paired the undated hatchet die with an obverse that bore a 12-spoked wheel and the inscription THE. WHEELE. GOES. ROUND., but it is not known if this issue predates or postdates the 1739 issue.

All of the Higley pieces are very rare today, according to legend because they were popular among goldsmiths as a source for pure copper suitable for alloying gold. For an interesting but probably apocryphal legend regarding the supposed reason why Higley valued his tokens at three pence, see “The Early Coins of America” by Sylvester S. Crosby (1875 and reprints). (more…)