By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

For many years, it has been my strong belief that the best DWN client is one who is educated. An educated collector is a confident collector and a confident collector is a more active collector. This is one of the reasons that I have tried to share as much of my knowledge about United States gold coins as possible. I’ve written the standard reference books on Charlotte, Carson City, Dahlonega and New Orleans gold as well as hundreds of specialized articles and blogs that can be found on my website www.raregoldcoins.com.

With few exceptions, I don’t think there are many other dealers who can make the claim that they are as interested in educating their clients as much as I can.

My current work-in-progress is something that I am especially proud of. I call it the DWN Online Rare Gold Coinapedia and I am proud to officially announce that it is available for collectors to use immediately.

What this online project consists of are hundreds of high-quality images (obverse and reverse) of 18th, 19th and 20th century United States gold coins along with descriptions of each. These descriptions, while taken from write-ups that originally appeared on my website, are informational as opposed to commercial and should provide the new collector with lots of basic facts about the coins they are interested in.

The beauty of this project is that it is totally non-commercial. None of the coins that appear on the on-line encyclopedia are currently for sale. No hype, no sales pressure, just useful facts about coins. And the quality of the images is superb.

At this point in time there are around 300 different images posted. These include the following:

• Over 40 gold dollars
• Over 65 quarter eagles
• Over 15 three dollars
• Over 85 half eagles
• Over 55 eagles
• Over 60 double eagles

And, there are miscellaneous images of coins such as Territorials as well.

As time passes, I will be adding images and descriptions to this resource. I hope to double it in size by the end of 2010. While it will never be totally complete (there are clearly a number of very rare issues that I will not be able to image in the near future) I anticipate that it will become an important, widely used reference in the months to come.

Please visit the DWN Online Rare Gold Coinopedia. Use it often and give me input as to how to make it better and more useful to you. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Content Partner: Pinnacle-Rarities

We’ve entered the last year of the popular modern commemorative quarter program. For better or worse, all fifty states have created designs and the final mintages will hit the nation’s cash registers during the remainder of the year. While I find these final five designs attractive, they (like their modern predecessors) lack the historical depth and symbolisms many of their classic commemorative cousins encompassed. And, as I look over the 2008 proof set that just crossed my desk, my mind goes back to the original commemorative quarter.

The 1893 Isabella Quarter, was created for the Columbian Exposition. $10,000 of the funds intended for the Board of Lady Mangers at the Expo was delivered in the form of forty thousand of these commemorative quarters. The board had been formed at the urging of woman’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, who felt both genders should be represented in the managerial makeup of this great national project the expo had become. The inclusion of a coin to commemorate female contributions to industry seems almost trifling by today’s standards. But the Woman’s Suffrage movement was full steam ahead at the time. In fact, women didn’t legally win the right to vote until Colorado adapted an amendment to allow them to do so, during this year, 1893. A cause Anthony had championed over the previous two and a half decades. What seems like just a novel idea now, was a veritable coup at the time. The quarter served not only to raise money for the cause, but as a sort of name recognition ad for the woman’s rights movement. And it fueled the growing fires of suffrage. The coins were to be sold at the fair for $1 each. A premium over face that was obscene to some. For this and a variety of other reasons, thousands went unsold during the fair. The balance was slowly sold off to dealers during the coming decade.

The dies were prepared by Charles Barber, presumably from sketches done by Kenyon Cox. Later research has brought this into question. But regardless of where the original ideas came from, the coin is wrought with symbolism – especially the reverse. The use of a monarch on the obverse is somewhat controversial, but considering what event the coin was supposed to commemorate, it was a natural choice. Queen Isabella was the backing Christopher Columbus needed to fund his adventure. The reverse is simply described in most numismatic literature as a kneeling woman holding a distaff, the spool used to hold unspun cotton. This image is now reported to represent “woman in industry.” This may be the case but, Barber’s image would have meant a lot more to the people in his time. (more…)

The news of the discovery of gold in California reached the Oregon Territory in late July 1848. That news was confirmed in Oregon City, seat of Clackamas County, on August 9 of that year, when the brig Henry docked with gold dust, arriving from San Francisco, and by October more than two-thirds of the men in Oregon had departed to seek treasure in the gold fields of California.

The Oregon Spectator, founded in 1846, one of the first newspapers west of the Mississippi River, was forced to stop publishing in 1848 “because its printer, with 3,000 officers, lawyers, physicians, farmers and mechanics were leaving for the gold fields.” (Kagin, Private Gold Coins and Patterns of the United States.)

By spring of the following year, gold dust had almost entirely replaced beaver and other fur pelts as the primary medium of exchange, although it traded at a substantial discount to silver coins (when available) and to its value at the Philadelphia Mint. Miners were losing money.

Against this backdrop, the Oregon Exchange Company was formed, with the express purpose of weighing and stamping gold.

Although Oregon was officially declared a territory of the United States on March 3, 1849--rendering any plan to coin gold clearly unconstitutional--several prominent residents determined to proceed with the plan.

PCGS Video:David McCarthy of Kagin’s tells the story of the 1849 $5 Oregon gold piece

The surnames of those residents were Kilborn, Magruder, Taylor, Abernethy, Willson, Rector, (Gill) Campbell, and Smith. Their initials K. M. T. A. W. R. G. S. appear around the rim of the five dollar gold pieces, which also picture a beaver on a log and a laurel wreath. In error, the initials T.O. (rather than O.T., for Oregon Territory) were stamped on the obverse.

The five dollar contains the reverse legend OREGON EXCHANGE COMPANY around the periphery, with 130 G. / NATIVE GOLD. / 5 D. in the center. The initials of two men were omitted from the ten dollar pieces struck later, and the T.O. was corrected to O.T.

The gold coinage was unalloyed with silver or copper, and succeeded in raising the price of gold dust from $12 to $16 as the pieces circulated. Alloy was purposely omitted to ensure that the pieces would be accepted regardless of variances in the purity of gold dust, but their inherent softness caused them to suffer in contact with the harder alloyed gold coinage from California--and their higher intrinsic value caused them to soon be melted. (more…)