Riddell Counterfeits Who Owns Them - Which Ones?

I am just wondering how many members have any of the Riddell counterfeit coins in their collections.

There are just under 300 different counterfeit coins listed in Dr. John Leonard Riddell's 1845 book "Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad". The book covers Dollar and Half Dollar sized coins.

For those of you not familiar with that book - it gives illustrations (actually type metal casts were made) of each type coin found to be in circulation in New Orleans during the period from 1839 to 1844. As such it created a "snap shot" in time of the coins that were actually circulating - the real ones and the counterfeits.

Here is a link to a photo copy of the book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Yw...e&q=&f=false br /

I am trying to determine how many of these coins still exist anywhere. I have been collecting for many years and I am still no where near to having a complete set. Many types in my collection are represented by only ONE coin.

For the last couple years, I have been working on a complete list of my own collection. I am close to done at this point and I did an extract of the Riddell varieties in my Mexican 8R collection. It is close to a complete list because I believe I own only 6 coins that are listed in Riddell which are not Mexican.

I determined that I own only 66 different Riddell types out of nearly 300 listed. I do own 10 different mules involving two re-mated Riddell dies and 50 varieties that are closely related to Riddell (either single dies re-mated with other non-Riddell dies or redated or recut dies etc.). This works out to a total of 126 different Riddell related coins but only 66 are identical matches of BOTH dies. These totals DO NOT include any duplicates.

I also did not include coins for which only a stylistic match exists. These stylistically similar coins may be related to Riddell varieties (by the same forgers) but conclusive proof of a match is not available at present.

Within the 126 different varieties there are representatives of 82 of the Riddell types (at times one die in a different mating). That means about 200 Riddell coins are totally unknown to me.

All together, I own 485 different Riddell's if you include the various metals, edge varieties, striking varieties, etc.

I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who owns any number of Riddell coins starting at 1. I am trying to get a better handle on the rarity of individual types. The populations of different Riddell coins and the number for which no "modern" trace exists are also goals.

I believe this information would be of great interest to me and other counterfeit collectors as well. I suspect that unlike real coins - the majority of these 1839-1844 forgeries may have been destroyed.

Any help would be appreciated. I can provide a spread sheet (which I could not copy here) for comparison with others willing to share data. Please contact me at swamperbob22@aol.com