Darth Anarchus "Boston Style" Bullion Forgeries are the full weight silver copies of Portrait 8 Reales made for use in the China Trade between roughly 1870 and 1930. These were made in the US (Boston was the first instance I heard of) and other international locations to supply Portrait 8R coins for people trading with mainland China.
The Chinese merchants were familiar with the Portrait 8Rs and trusted them above all other silver trade coins. The Chinese merchants preferred high grade coins - but the practice of chop marking coins soon reduced many of the coins to nearly unrecognizable lumps of silver. In the 1870's and 1880's some Chinese merchants began paying a premium of 5% or more for high grade Portrait 8Rs. The Chinese merchants referred to the coins as "Bustman" dollars.
Starting in the 1870's, silver discoveries in the US west dumped so much silver on the market that world prices fell. The supply exceeded demand and so the standard "dollar" soon contained less than a dollars worth of silver. Sharp operators would present silver bullion at the mint for coining dollars and then trade the silver coins for gold at banks. The ratio between gold and silver was drastically altered and eventually many countries went off the silver standard. There are many books covering the dispute between the proponents of the silver and gold standards.
But the Chinese merchants had a preference for silver and they wanted Portrait 8Rs which were last produced about 50 years earlier.
There was an attempt at about this time to open a branch US mint in San Francisco to make only MEXICAN Portrait 8R coins but the deal fell apart when Mexico demanded a percentage fee for the US to make them. But that did not stop "private" industry from filling the need. Millions of copies of the Portrait 8Rs were made for export to China over the next 5-6 decades. The trade in "bullion copies" did not cease until about 1930 just prior to the Chinese government demonetizing the OLD Bustman coins.
The fact that portrait 8Rs were made in large numbers has been known about for many years but a simple way to identify these bullion copies has never been found. The dies used were very well made by professional jewelers, token and button makers. Private mints were common at that time and operated legally in the US as long as there was no intent to defraud the merchants by using too little silver. In some cases, sterling silver (more available in some markets) was substituted for 900 fine silver. These are detectable by SG. A few were made in debased silver down to about 700 fine - these too can be identified by SG.
The impetus for the trade was the ability to secure the coin that the Chinese wanted. There was a 15% premium for quantities of 8Rs from Mexico (I suspect they too were making new bullion copies. It is hard to believe that even Mexico had substantial numbers of old Portrait 8Rs in the 1870's in high grades. Mexico wanted a 15% premium for the coins. I would propose that these Mexican made "restrikes" would have used IDENTICAL methods and so may be 100% undetectable).
So, at some points in time, bullion copies of the 8R could be made for 35 to 50 cents each for materials. In China these could be used to buy goods valued nearer to $1. Under the circumstances there was no shortage of people willing to make the coins.
In my hometown, there was a factory that produced these coins from about 1880 to 1930. I actually spoke to one of the last surviving members of the production crew in the 1960s and heard first hand the stories of the production. It was a large scale operation that produced thousands of coins A DAY.
So starting when I was a teen, I went on a quest to figure out HOW to identify these coins and separate them from the "originals".
jfransch I am unaware of Mexico using a single die edger at any point in production. The edge mills were all set up for two die bars and using one to edge with one die would have required far too much time in my opinion. Each coin blank would take exactly twice as long to edge and at the half way point the coin would have to be taken out and re-inserted. There are some instances of old chipped edge dies and non-matching old edge dies coming back into service after they had been retired. To me this indicates an effort to keep the two die edgers in production. I suspect the single edge die apparatus was not used by the Mexicans.
However, when machine power replaced human power (like in the US in 1880) a powered edger could be used to edge a coin with one die or with a rotary die. This was FAST. But created one overlap.
I have also experimented with trace contaminants (detectable by XRF) as markers for the type - but I find that once again the "experts" in the field are saying simply "don't bother". "There is no way to tell." But no one that I know has tried with anything other than colonial copper coins trying to isolate the mines the raw materials came from. I would prefer to experiment and prove it does not work, but to do so I need access to an XRF for an extended period of time. I did a few tests (about 12) when I had access to an XRF in 1999 and the results were "promising" but I would need 100's or 1000's of tests to "prove" it to the experts.
odentheviking and
RealPeso The attitude that these 1870-1930 copies are REAL drives me nuts. If that criteria is acceptable, does that mean that the Chinese silver counterfeits made last week will be REAL someday?
Just because it may be difficult to distinguish between the REAL coins made from 1771 to 1825 - the Late Bullion Counterfeits 1870-1930 and the Modern Frauds made anytime is that any reason NOT TO TRY?
Posted 02/16/2011 3:40 pm
