1804年银质一美元 PCGS Proof 65。1804 Draped Bust Silver Dollar. Class I Original. Bowers Borckardt-304. Rarity-7. Proof-65 (PCGS). There is no other coin in the United States series which has such a widespread and acknowledged great value and rarity, or which adds so much numismatic glory to a collection, as the King of American rarities - the 1804 dollar.
- Henry Chapman, 1885No American coin is more famous, more widely desired, or more highly valued than the silver dollar of 1804. It is a coin of great rarity, with just eight known Class I Originals. It is a coin of great history, coined in 1834 to distribute as an official gift from the United States of America to foreign heads of state. It has retained its resume of superlatives for over a century. The 1804 dollar is surpassingly famous both within and beyond the field of numismatics, and it is this fame that buttresses its claim as King of American Coins.This example has long been known as the Dexter specimen, after James V. Dexter, a wealthy numismatist of relative obscurity who owned it for 14 years at the end of the 19th century. Much of its association with Dexter relies upon its most unusual characteristic: a tiny D stamped into cloud 7 on the reverse. That D was likely placed by another collector, William Forrester Dunham, a Chicago collector who owned this coin longer than anyone else in its history.
If there is one consistent thread in the story of the 1804 dollars, it is that the power of legend is often stronger than the allure of history. This coins true story is more fascinating than its legend could ever be.Coined 183 years ago, this coin carries its antiquity beautifully. It has acquired a deep elegant tone, dark gray and blue on the obverse tinted with subtle violet and gold, while the reverse is resplendent in rich blue-green at center and lighter rose and gold at the periphery. This color scheme is not entirely unlike other high grade 1804 Original dollars, including those struck for delivery to the monarchs of Muscat and Siam. This piece may have been retained in a similar gift cask that imbued it with similar colors. This coin took on a fingerprint at some point, now part of its patina in the right central obverse field. The obverse shows some hairlines and a few scattered marks, including one alongside the top peak of Libertys hair beneath the left side of E in LIBERTY and another left of the base of star 10. The reverse, apparently long protected, is a grade finer, deeply reflective and all but unmarked. A short scratch is hidden between the arrow talon and the rim, and some toning spots are scattered across the surface, but other significant issues are not to be found.The surfaces of this coin betray its importance when struck and the special preparation undertaken to manufacture it. The edge is squared, its lettered devices crushed, both aspects created by the collar that restrained this planchet at the moment of striking. The portrait of Liberty, decades old when this die was created, is rusty, with patches visible on her chest, along her drapery, among the strands of her hair, and between her bow and the back of her head. Lapping lines remain from the effort to remove the greater part of the rust within the intricacies of the master portrait die.
The same lapping effort removed the tip of the curl atop Libertys head. Both the die faces and the planchet were polished, creating a reflective appearance. Lintmarks were struck into the coin in front of Libertys lips, on either side of the olive branch talon, above the arrow bundle, above N of UNITED, between RI of AMERICA, and between stars 2 and 3 of the reverse cluster. Though the strike was forceful enough to create superb relief and detail at the centers, each obverse star shows a flat center and the top of Libertys hair is soft, perhaps a reflection of how little expertise the Mint staff of 1834 had in the coining of dollars, a denomination that had not been produced for 30 years. The obverse die is cracked from atop star 7 through the tops of all letters of LIBERTY, and the reverse is cracked through the letters NITED. The reverse crack does not quite reach the wing feathers; on the 1802 Novodel in this sale, coined from the same reverse die, the crack extends minutely farther, a that that coin was struck after this one.There are eight Original or Class I 1804 dollars. Four of them were carried overseas by Edmund Roberts and the crew of the U.S.S. Peacock. Two of those four have been identified: the King of Siam specimen and the Sultan of Muscat-Watters-Pogue specimen. Two others were intended for the heads of state of Japan and Cochin-China (modern Vietnam), but after the death of Edmund Roberts on June 12, 1836, their trail runs cold.Among the other Originals, two can be traced back to the U.S. Mint with no broken provenance links: the Mint Cabinet specimen and the Stickney coin, which was acquired by Matthew A. Stickney via trade in 1843. The provenance of the other four specimens can be traced back to 1847 (the Mickley coin, which Mickley reported he acquired from a Philadelphia bank teller), sometime in the late 1840s (the Parmelee specimen, said to have been acquired from the Mint during the Polk administration of 1845-49), 1865 (the Cohen coin, which was reported to have been found at an exchange office in Richmond, Virginia in well worn condition), and 1884, when the present specimen turned up in Germany.Aside from the Siam and Muscat coins, two of the other six traveled around the world in 1835 and 1836.
It is possible that the coins requisitioned by the Secretary of State returned, via bureaucratic channels and after a round-the-world voyage, back to the Mint. Sounding a note of sincere doubt toward that scenario may betray a certain expectation of how governments work and how they do not. It seems more likely that the cased Proof sets of 1835 that were intended for the rulers of Japan and Cochin-China were traded, misappropriated, lost, or kept as souvenirs by officers of the ship. Perhaps one got spent, only to be later acquired by Joseph J. Mickley or Mendes I. Cohen. Perhaps one stayed for years with its Proof set, remaining a perfect gem on its protected reverse, acquiring toning that closely resembles that found on the Siam and Muscat coins, if also acquiring some fingerprints and smudges on its exposed obverse when examined by owners who were anything but practiced numismatists.Circumstantial though it may be, the Dexter 1804 dollar fits that description perfectly. Its reverse is a near twin for the gem specimens traced to the 1834 Proof sets given to the Sultan of Muscat and King of Siam. Its toning and surfaces suggest careful stewardship, and its discovery in Europe is suggestive of a round trip from the United States whose return leg did not take place until 1884.All available evidence suggests that this coins appearance in Germany was free of hijinks or purposeful creation of an artificial provenance. The Chapman brothers, then in their 30s, appear to have been the only Americans to seriously pursue this classic American rarity when it appeared, accurately described and illustrated on the cover, of Adolph Weyls sale of October 13, 1884. Their big score, hidden in plain sight where no professional American dealer could have missed it, seems to have frustrated their competition. The aspersions cast by their contemporaries, particularly Ed. Frossard, have lingered to the present day. Frossards conspiracy theory that Weyl had been given an electrotype to catalog instead of a genuine coin was not firmly tamped down until Eric Newman was able to see a copy of the October 1884 Weyl catalog first hand, an opportunity that unfortunately did not arise until after The Fantastic 1804 Dollar was published in 1962.Based in Berlin, Adolf Weyl was among the preeminent German dealers of his generation. He was well known to American dealers, particularly after his 1878-1879 presentation of the Jules Fonrobert Collection. The Fonrobert catalog was so extensive that it became a standard reference on Latin American coins and is still used regularly, having been reprinted in 1974.
Fonroberts cabinet of North American coins was full of important American rarities, including two Continental dollars, a 1792 half disme, a 1793 Chain cent, a 1796 No Stars quarter eagle, half dollars of 1796 and 1797, an 1836 Gobrecht dollar, dozens of private and territorial gold coins including an 1849 Mormon $20, even more California fractionals, hundreds of lots of patterns, and thousands of tokens and medals from the exceptional to utterly ordinary. With 6,205 lots of only North American pieces, plus another 4,000 lots of coins, tokens, and medals from Central and South America, the Fonrobert Collection was a headline story in the American numismatic community. Its contents and presentation were widely known and discussed, and Weyl had arranged for American distribution of the Fonrobert catalog by B. Westermann & Co, of 524 Broadway, New York, a firm that principally sold books but also maintained a numismatic department staffed by Lyman Low. The October 1879 issue of the American Journal of Numismatics mentioned that German numismatic publications had "recently announced the death of several prominent numismatists, the best known of whom to American collectors is doubtless that of Fonrobert, of Berlin, the sale of whose large collection by Herr Adolph Weyl recently attracted too much attention." In the "Coin Sales" column of the October 1885 American Journal of Numismatics, when discussing a current auction that included many items purchased from the Fonrobert sales, the editor noted "in cataloguing which for sale, Herr Adolph Weyl, whose skill and knowledge in this direction is well known, had the aid of some of the best experts on the Continent" leading to bidders having "the greatest confidence in his attributions and descriptions." David Proskey referred to the catalog as "the noble Fonrobert catalogue" in The Coin Collectors Journal in December 1884.
Weyls work was uniformly held in the highest regard.Considering Weyls standing among American numismatists of the 1880s, there is some irony attendant to the 20th century theory that he was a rube, chosen by the Chapman brothers as a backwater outlet through which to launder an 1804 dollar sourced in the United States by adding an exotic provenance. Had the Dexter 1804 dollar come from a Continental source of less repute, from a catalog that did not take extraordinary pains to illustrate it (including taking the absolutely unheard of step of photographing the edge), perhaps such a story could hold some theoretical water. In this case, it holds none, as there was perhaps no better known nor better respected European dealer in the United States than Adolph Weyl.Following their presentation to the American Numismatic Society from the estate of Henry Chapmans daughter in 2002, researcher Mark Ferguson perused the Chapman firms letterbooks for further evidence. The retained copies of the letters written to Weyl reveal a transaction so commonplace, it could be emails written from an American dealer to a European auction house today: bids and questions about condition, poorly understood directions resulting in difficulty completing payment and shipping arrangements, and strained pleasantries. While having the Chapmans own copies of the letters they sent without Weyls replies does not provide evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt, they certainly raise no suspicions that the transaction was anything beyond what it appears on its face.The Chapmans bid 1,360 marks for the Dexter dollar on the assumption that the coin "is a restrike" and they hoped Weyl would "buy it for us at much less than the amount we bid." Only half of their hopes came true.
They did purchase the coin for far less than they bid, but the coin was a far more valuable original, not a restrike. Their full invoice totaled 1,260 marks, including 900.50 marks for the 1804 dollar. Weyl not only bid for them competitively, he purchased the star lot for 35% less than they were willing to spend. A superb Original 1804 dollar had cost them about $225.Considering Weyls well known expertise and the great care he took in describing the coin, nothing explains the Chapmans good fortune aside from the deeply-held suspicions of the American numismatic establishment about newly discovered 1804 dollars. Restrikes, today called Class III specimens, continued to appear until as late as the 1880s. Counterfeits appeared regularly then, as they do today. David Fanning has translated Weyls description, and his numismatic talents are clear. The condition is described as "tadellos, noch nicht im Verkehr gewesen" or "flawless, Uncirculated" and Weyl knew enough to compare it to the Cohen coin that sold in New York in November 1876. "Genau mit der Abbildung der im Jahre 1875 zu New-York versteigerten No. 535 der Collection Cohen übereinstimmend; Randschrift jedoch auf vorgliegendem Exemplar nur schwach ausgeprägt," he wrote, noting that this was the same as the Original Class I sold in the Mendes Cohen sale but that the edge lettering was softly impressed, a observation one could make about all genuine Class I 1804 dollars, whose lettered edges were flattened or crushed at the moment of striking.Weyl did everything correctly, including placing a photograph of the sale highlight on the title page of his catalog, a most unusual genuflection to the importance of the coin. The photograph was of a plaster cast of the coin being sold, a tradition typical of European sales of this era and still commonplace in England and the Continent until the first decades of the 20th century. Despite Weyls excellent effort, the Chapmans got lucky. Their competition made a grave error in either not competing aggressively or not bidding at all.
Left with egg on their face, they never forgot it.The question of where Weyl had acquired the 1804 dollar will likely never be satisfactorily answered. He had long included a premium list or want list in his catalogs listing coins he was interested in acquiring, a fact first discovered by Dave Stone. Among the dates he advertised his interest in were silver dollars of 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1801, 1803, and 1804. After the Fonrobert sales, Weyl had apparently earned a reputation as a European outlet for American coins, and many of his sales included at least a few. Whether he owned the 1804 dollar he sold or had it consigned to him; whether it came through the European numismatic marketplace or from a non-numismatic source; whether it came from Germany or another nation entirely; we may never know.Ed. Frossard was the first to chime in with his feelings that the dollar that Weyl sold probably wasnt genuine. He had expressed grumpiness towards Weyl in print before he ever handled an 1804 dollar. When the Fonrobert coins and medals were being sold, Frossard lamented in Numisma that "it is to be regretted that these catalogues come in fragments and that the date is invariably too close to send bids with the hope of reaching in time." His negative attitude continued in the November 1885 issue of Numisma:The chief attraction however was No. 159, 1804 dollar, in uncirculated condition, of which photographs have been extensively circulated in America. This sold for M. (Reichsmark = 24c.) 900 and 50 pfennig, but without guarantee. If there was but one obverse and one reverse die of the genuine 1804, this is a skillful alteration because it is not from the same dies as the Parmelee dollar, a genuine U.S. Mint restrike; if more than one pair of dies were used at the Mint in 1804, this dollar, with the lettered edge, may be genuine, and in the latter case a great bargain for the buyer.
The fact that neither guarantee would be given, nor assurance that the coin would be taken back, if bought conditionally about the M. 900 50, would probably indicate that the owner had grave doubt of its authenticity ... A very interesting catalogue, compiled with the unapproachable thoroughness of detail for which German numismatists are distinguished.Frossard seems to have misread the photography of the coins plaster cast, which showed some fissures in the plaster that could be confused for die cracks or something similar. Though the Original and Restrike 1804 dollars employed different reverse dies, the dies that struck the Parmelee and Dexter specimens were the same.The Chapmans finally received the new star of their inventory in February 1885 and promptly set about figuring out exactly what they had bought. They asked A. Loudon Snowden, the superintendent of the Philadelphia Mint, for information about 1804 dollar restrikes and the date the dies had been destroyed. They asked Matthew A. Stickney if Henry could visit him and examine his 1804 dollar; Stickney declined, but said it was just like the one in the Mint Cabinet. Inquiries were made to three other collectors who owned specimens, another who used to own one, and the assistant assayer of the U.S. Mint, who weighed the example in the Mint Cabinet. With their research accomplished and all their bases covered, they turned their new purchase over quickly, cataloging it for their May 1885 sale. The coin was trumpeted in golden ink on the front cover of the catalog and the sales introduction beat the drum further:The 1804 dollar will be the great feature of the sale, and no doubt will cause spirited competition, as it is the only fine specimen sold within ten and a half years, and probably the finest known. We have taken great pains to give a history of the original and restrike 1804 Dollars, much of it appearing in this catalogue which has never before been published or known to collectors, particularly that referring to the differences between the original and restrikes and about the alteration of the die.
The lengthy description, ?perhaps the longest ever lavished on any coin in an American numismatic auction catalog up to that point in time, was not bashful about where the coin came from, identifying not only the source but what other choice early American coins the Chapmans had obtained at the same time. The coin was guaranteed genuine and offered in a "white vellum and gold, plush lined case."David Proskey, then editing The Coin Collectors Journal in the employ of J.W. Scott and Scott Stamp and Coin Co., revealed in the July 1885 issue of that publication that the Scott firm had been the successful buyer of the coin in the Chapman sale, paying $1,000, "the highest price ever actually paid for a single coin." No other coin had ever brought a four-digit price. The piece was purchased "on account of Mr. J.V. Dexter," Proskey reported, hastening to "congratulate Mr. Dexter upon this most valuable addition to his cabinet."James Vila Dexter was little known at the time. He remained little researched until Mark Fergusons 2014 book that, though fairly criticized for some of its gambits into the realms of fiction, expanded our appreciation for Dexter a hundredfold. Dexter (1836-1899) was a wealthy Denver businessman, and invested in banking and other interests typical of a Western tycoon. He collected extensively both within and without the realm of numismatics, though nearly all of his numismatic acquisitions were made in a very narrow window in the mid to late 1880s. Dexters collection of silver dollars was complete by date from 1794 to date, including a set of Proof trade dollars acquired at the same sale as the 1804. His gold coins included rarities like the 1798 Small Eagle half eagle, and the highlight of his collection of patterns was a very rare 1792 Birch cent, also acquired from the Chapmans May 1885 sale. Dexter, like many collectors of his era, dabbled in ancient and world coins as well.J.W. Scotts letter to Dexter, dated May 19, 1885, reveals that Dexter had sought to purchase the coin for under $1,000, though Scott chased it to a high bid of $1,000 (not including his own commission) because "I think it is the best one known." Perhaps hearing the numismatic rumor mill churn, Dexter quickly wrote to the Chapman brothers asking for assurances that his coin was genuine, a request to which the Chapmans quickly assented. "We guarantee the 1804 dollar . to be genuine and as described in the catalogue," they wrote on June 3, 1885, further guaranteeing that it was just like the other Original 1804 dollars they had mentioned in the catalog.
Perhaps thanks to Frossards agitation, both in print and by whisper campaign, Dexter was unsatisfied. He wrote to J. Colvin Randall, renowned specialist on early American silver coins. Randall didnt help the situation, proclaiming in a letter of August 5, 1885, that regarding Dexters 1804 dollar "I have nothing to say about [it], except that I did not want it at any price - when the German catalogue was first recd here Mr. Ed. Frossard ... wrote to them for a guarantee of the piece which they declined giving."Dexter couldnt help himself from reaching out to the agent provocateur Frossard directly. Frossard responded on July 29, 1885, about "the 1804 dollar ... which Chapman Bros. claim to have bought" in Berlin. After casting doubt on the entire transaction, he proceeded to cast doubt upon the object thereof, insisting the coin was a recent restrike "using old U.S. silver dollars with lettered edge as planchets" and that somewhere between 25 and 100 had been restruck, then offered at $25 each. Frossards technical skills as a numismatist were as expert as his opinions were valid; his horse cart was heaped high and was at risk of soiling everyone standing near it. Frossard suggested Dexter seek redress via "a Court of Justice" and signed off politely.On March 15, 1886, Dexters attorney filed a $5,000 lawsuit against the Chapman brothers in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. As evidence, Dexter had sent his attorney a copy of the May 1885 Chapman catalog, a flier advertising the sale, the sales invoice from J.W. Scott, and the Chapmans letter of guarantee, along with the letters from Frossard and J. Colvin Randall that condemned the coin. Dexters only negative evidence was the complaints of two ornery competitors of the parties from whom he had purchased the coin.Hearing of the lawsuit, J.W. Scott wrote Dexter a letter and tried to gently drop the hint that Frossard was well known to be full of beans: "Of the 1804 dollar we purchased for you of the Chapmans, there can be no doubt of its genuineness. Soon after the sale a silly story without the slightest foundation in fact was circulated by some enemy of theirs in the hopes of doing them an injury and possibly of securing your trade. The result appears to have been simply to disgust you with collecting and putting you to great expense for nothing." Those expenses continued, as Dexters lawyers continued to draft letters and interview numismatists. Upon being informed in January 1887 that Mint Superintendent A. Loudon Snowden and three other Mint employees would swear that his coin was authentic, Dexter asked his lawyer to drop the case. Dexter ended the suit on the proviso that he would receive "Certificates of Genuineness" from those U.S. Mint officials.A. Loudon Snowden issued a sworn statement on February 10, 1887, that veers from fact to fiction and back to fact again. His "very full and thorough knowledge of the coins preserved by the said Mint ... what is termed the Mint Cabinet of Coins" is, perhaps, debatable. His testimony that "among which is a certain silver dollar of the year 1804 coined in that year" is as false as "which silver dollar has been in the possession of the authorities of said Mint for more than forty-five years" is true.
Forty-five years before 1887 was 1842, the year the 1804 dollars existence was first published in Eckfeldt and DuBoiss A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations. Snowden went on to confirm that the Dexter coin was identical to the example in the Mint Cabinet, "the figures, characters, lettering, edging, etc. etc. on said coins" being "absolutely the same," and that "both of said coins are genuine coins, coined at the same time and from the same dies and collar." All these facts check out, indeed, the only thing Snowden fibbed about was the fact that any of these coins had been minted in 1804.When this coin was sold in 1941, as part of the William Forrester Dunham Collection, Snowdens affidavit, an affidavit signed by Jacob B. Eckfeldt and R.A. McClure of the Philadelphia Mint, another signed by Patterson DuBois of the Philadelphia Mint, and various letters from the Chapmans, were illustrated by B. Max Mehl in the coins auction description. Those documents transferred with the coin to its purchaser, Charles M. Williams, and were offered alongside this coin when it sold in the Harold S. Bareford Collection auction of October 1981. No mention of them was made in the 1989 auction presentation of this coin, nor were they apparently present when this coin was last offered in October 2000. Though their whereabouts are currently unknown, they are hopefully still preserved somewhere, as the various affidavits remain to this day the only official U.S. Mint statements of authenticity of any 1804 dollar.William Forrester Dunham acquired this coin at the public auction of the H.G. Brown Collection on October 11, 1904, having traveled to New York from his Chicago home expressly to purchase it. Brown had paid Roland G. Parvin, James V. Dexters executor, $2,000 for the coin just a year earlier, a heady markup from the world record $1,000 Dexter paid in 1885. Dunham won the coin for $1,100. It remained in his collection until his death in 1939, a period when Dunham greatly enjoyed displaying it at conventions, coin club meetings, and any other opportunity that availed itself. His pride was great enough that he stamped a tiny D into cloud 7 on the reverse. Though numerous writers have attributed the D to Dexter, the identical mark is found on Hard Times tokens known to have been owned by Dunham, and an early $10 gold piece is also known similarly marked. Though B. Max Mehl swore to Harold Bareford that the D was not present when Dunham owned it, it is diminutive enough (and Mehls glasses were thick enough) that no one could be faulted for having missed it.Mehl owned the coin when it was "auctioned" in the Dunham sale of 1941, though the coin had already been placed with Charles Williams at $4,250.
When Williams sold his collection to Abe Kosoff and Sol Kaplan in 1950, the coin was sold via private treaty to Harold Bareford for $10,000. It realized $280,000 in the 1981 Stacks sale of Barefords cabinet, then $425,000 in a private transaction in 1985. In 1989, slightly more than a century after this coin had been the first to ever sell for $1,000, it came within a hairs breadth of being the first to cross the $1,000,000 threshold, realizing $990,000 in Auction 89. The price was nonetheless a world record, and newspapers around the world lavished it with headlines.B. Max Mehl mastered the language of desirability like no one else. When he cataloged this coin for the Dunham sale, he described its attractions as follows:In all the history of numismatics of the entire world, there is not today and there never has been a single coin which was and is the subject of so much romance, interest, comment, and upon which so much has been written and so much talked about and discussed as the United States Silver Dollar of 1804.This great coin was the first coin of United States mintage to have been recognized as the rarest coin of the United States, from the very beginning of American numismatics, more than one hundred years ago. And it is today, as it always has been, the best known and most sought-after coin, not only among collectors, but among the public in general as well.Since Mehls day, three more full-length books on the 1804 dollar have been published. Examples have held and broken every record, made every newspaper, and graced the most famous cabinets. Any 1804 dollar, even later restrikes, elicits a nearly mystical attraction from advanced numismatists. The Originals, struck in the mid-1830s "to oblige a foreign official with a dollar of that date," in David Proskeys words, radiate the most powerful draw. Only eight are known. Discounting those permanently lodged in museums in Omaha, Washington, and Colorado Springs, only five can ever be owned. While each tells an impressive tale of exotic monarchs or numismatists whose names are legend, this may be the most storied among them.