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Before I began researching the amount of gold coinage produced by the members of the Bechtler family in North Carolina in the mid-19th century, I consulted my copy of Private Gold Coins and Patterns of the United States by Donald Kagin. The book includes a table that is probably familiar to anyone acquainted with the Bechtler … Read more

The Annual Report of the Director of the Mint normally included details that year’s coin production. However, the 1887 Annual Report included, for the first time, a table showing the mintage by denomination and mint, for each year from 1792. The Report stated that “[t]his valuable table, which has been compiled with no little care and … Read more

The operations of the New Orleans Mint, unlike the other US Mints, clearly fall into two periods: the Antebellum Period (from 1838 to early 1861), when the New Orleans Mint operated in a thriving city that exported the products of the Mississippi River valley and, the Post-Civil War Period (from 1878 to 1909), when New Orleans … Read more

For the citizens of the United States, and as well for the collector of Southern Gold, 1861 was a pivotal year in our history. Of course, this was the year in which the decades of tension between the northern states and the southern states finally devolved into what is now known as the Civil War. For … Read more

Gold was first discovered in North Carolina in 1799, but it was five years before anyone made the arduous journey to deposit some at the Philadelphia Mint so that it could be turned into coins. A total of about $11,000 was deposited in 1804, but thereafter, deposits averaged only $2,500 annually until 1824, which marked … Read more