I am the fellow who intentionally bid on the counterfeit 1795 Mexican 8R. I have been collecting counterfeit Mexican 8R coins since the late 1950s. I have over 1,500 counterfeit dollars in my collection.
Since I retired I have been working on an update of John L. Riddell's book the "Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad". For those of you who may not be familiar with this book - it was intended to be the first in a series of identification guides for the circulating coinage of the US as of 1845. It included pictures of all the real, debased and counterfeit dollar and half dollar coins that John Riddell could locate. Dr. John Riddell was the melter and refiner at the US mint in New Orleans. As such, he supervised the melting of foreign silver coins at the mint. He indicated that roughly $50,000 worth of foreign coins were being melted each month by the US government. (FYI, foreign silver coins formed the bulk of the circulating specie of the US until they were withdrawn from circulation in 1857.) Riddell estimated that 90% of all circulating hard money (coin) was foreign in origin. US made coins were therefore not the primary vehicle for early US commerce.
John Riddell was appointed to the position at the New Orleans mint in 1839 shortly after the branch opened. He determined early on that the refined silver routinely came up about 5% short when melting foreign coins. The problem was the large number of circulating counterfeits and debased originals in the melt batches. Riddell estimated that anywhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 10 coins he encountered were counterfeit or debased. His book (books) were intended to be identification guides for real and fake coins, so that merchants and bankers could identify forgeries and value the silver content appropriately. He got the counterfeits from the US mint collection and from other sources including the New Orleans mint Assayer , Dr. William P. Hort who was a coin collector.
The "Monograph" he published in 1845 includes pictures of 282 counterfeit and 143 real dollar coins. In addition, he has pictures of 87 half dollars but only one counterfeit foreign half dollar is included. Riddell indicated that other books were in the works, but none was ever published. I personally believe that this was in part because the assay information for the counterfeits proved to be unreliable, even when the same type coin was being tested. Since Riddell clearly intended his book to serve as a sort of redemption guide (he lists a value for each forgery)- he discovered too late that counterfeiters could not be counted on to maintain any one metal contenet in their products. While some coins had as much as 70% of the actual silver content others were totally worthless.
The coin I use as my "avatar" is the Riddell # 237 a counterfiet variety of the 1834 Zs OM Mexican 8R. This coin was most likely made not in Mexico but in the Northeast US during the Hard Times. It is a very common coin that is often sold on
ebay as real. It was the coin that provoked my interest in the subject of circulating counterfeits when I was a pre-teen.
If any of you own 8R coins or other silver dollar sized coins from the period between 1770 and 1857 and you are concerned they may not be real, just send me a scan and I will give you a free second opinion. If anyone has counterfeits for sale - I am always interested in new varieties.
Posted 04/19/2005 11:32 pm
