Appendix I 

 Smithson's Gold Sovereigns 



From the very beginning of minting operations in 

 the United States, choice specimens were sought for 

 the Mint Collection. William E. Du Bois in his 

 Pledges of History. A BrieJ Account oj the Collection oj 

 Coins Belonging to the Mint of Ike United States, More 

 Parlicidarlv of the Antique Specimens (Philadelphia, 1846) 

 states that from the early days of the Mint, Adam 

 Eckfeldt (fig. 12) used to select "and to retain some 

 of the finest foreign specimens, as they appeared in 

 deposit for recoinagc." This had become an estab- 

 lished procedure by Jime 1838 when the Mint 

 cabinet was officially opened, Just a few months before 

 the huge Smithson gold deposit was received. The 

 eagerness of the Mint assayers, William E. Du Bois 

 (fig. 13) and Jacob R. Eckfeldt, to complete the Mint 

 collections is well recorded. In his Pledges oj History 

 in 1846 and, again, in a second edition in 1851, Du 

 Bois mentions that after the collection took a per- 

 manent form in June 1838, it "has gone on in a con- 

 tinual auginentation . . . specimens of new coinage, 

 domestic or foreign, must be added as they appear. 



".•\ great majority of the coins — almost all of those 

 not over three hundred years old — ha\e been culled 

 from deposits, and consequently have cost us no 

 more than their bullion value. They are moreover, the 

 choicest of their kind. . . ." 



Data concerning coins which might have been 

 represented in the Mint collection in that early 

 period of its existence may be excerpted, with caution 

 and some qualifications, from Eckfeldt and Du Bois' 

 A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations Struck 

 Within the Past Century (Philadelphia, 1842). A medal- 

 ruling machine invented by Christian Gobrecht and 

 perfected by Joseph Saxton was used in making the 

 illustrations in this Manuitl. The method required the 

 preparation of galvanic copies from actual coins, 

 and we must assume that they used only examples of 

 coins easily accessible to them, and drew largely, 

 therefore, on the Mint collection. 



Among the English coins illustrated on plate \'I of 

 the Manual and described on pages 192 and 193 are 

 found sovereigns of George III dated 1817 (illus. 5), 

 William IV dated 1831 (illus. 7), ai;d one dated 

 1838 of Queen \'ictoria (illus. 14). These, of course, 

 may not be considered as a listing of all sovereigns 

 represented at the time on the trays of the Mint 



collection, but rather as a selection considered to be 

 within the scope of the Manual. 



.Some years later, a catalogue listing all coins in the 

 Mint cabinet was prepared under the direction of 

 James Ross Snowden, director of the Mint. Entitled 

 .1 Description of Ancient and Modern Coins, in the Cabinet 

 Collection at the Mint of the United States, it was published 

 in 1 860 in Philadelphia. English coins from the period 

 of the .Smithson bequest may be found listed on pages 

 193-199. From this listing we learn that the collection 

 contained sovereigns dated 1817,'" 1818,"^ 1823, 

 1826,"'' 1831, and 1838."'' Sovereigns were first issued 

 in 1817 in the name of George III and continued to be 

 struck in his name up to the end of his reign in 1820. 

 Under George I\' (1820-1830) there were two issues 

 showing distinctly different designs. William I\' 

 (1830-1837) sovereigns were struck with dates from 

 1831 to 1837, while 1838 is the first year of sovereigns 

 issued in the name of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). 

 One might assume that sovereigns similar to any of 

 these, bearing various dates from 1817-1838, would 

 have been included in the .Smithson deposit of 

 104,960 pieces; this, however, does not seem to have 

 been the case. 



The 1826 sovereign and the 1831 sovereign of 

 William I\' are not of a regular issue coined for 

 circulation, but rather specimen strikings or proofs. 

 Both pieces are preserved in the national numis- 

 matic collections at the Smithsonian. Obviously, 

 these two pieces could not hav'e been selected from 

 deposits, but came directly from the London Mint 

 and were among the "sample coins" which Franklin 

 Peale was "obliged to purchase" and which he sent 

 in 1833 to Samuel Moore, then director of the United 

 States Mint, together with a few others presented to 

 him by Mr. Morrison, the deputy master of the Royal 

 Mint."' 



There are, ■ however, two sovereigns struck in the 

 name of Queen Victoria, both dated 1 838, and these 

 are listed in Snowden's catalogue on pages 197ff. 

 under numbers 183 and 184. One of the sovereigns 



"^Snowden, Description, p. 19;i, no. 124. .\ die break on the 

 reverse side identifies this piece with the one illustrated on plate 

 VI, 5 in the ".Manuat" and with the one now in the national 

 collections. 



UMbid., no. VZ'). 



"'Ibid., p. 195, nos. 149-150. The WIS sovereign is not 

 listed in the second (1913) and third ( 1914) editions of the U.S. 

 Mint catalogue, neither can it be located in the collection. 



'I'Ibid.. p. 197, no. 169. 



'" Letter from Franklin Peale to S. .\Ioorc, November 20, 

 18:!;3, National .\rchives. Records of the United States .Mint at 

 Philadelphia, Franklin Pejile Correspondence, No. 1 . 



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BUI.I.F.TIN 229: CONTRIBITTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HI.STORY .AND TECHNOLOGY 



