PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 48, November 25, 2001, Article 8 GREAT BALLS OF SPECIE In response to Dick Johnson's query about Panamint balls of silver, Dave Bowers writes: "In doing research for my book on the California Gold Rush and its numismatic aspects I encountered multiple mentions of the practice of casting gold and silver into very large ingots to be transported by animal-back over remote areas. The shipments were not of California gold, but were of metal from South American mines. Mule trains with valuable bullion, crossing the Isthmus of Panama from the Pacific to the Atlantic side in the era before the Gold Rush, were often lightly guarded with only two or three men. The theory was that if the trains were robbed, the thieves could not transport the bullion easily. A flaw in this logic might be that the animals themselves might be captured along with their load -- but this was not addressed in the narratives I read. Some later historians confused these earlier Spanish-American heavy gold ingots with California gold shipments, but I have found no record whatever of such a procedure being used for California Gold Rush (1848 and later) metal." Jan Monroe writes: "For my friend Dick Johnson I provide the following: During the Nevada Centennial a publicity stunt was arranged and that was to send a Panamint Ball from Nevada to the U.S. Mint. The ball weighed 629.25 pounds and was scheduled to be shipped from Nevada via eleven state capitols, and plaques were to be presented to each governor made from titanium and mounted on old Comstock Mine timber. Unfortunately President Kennedy was assassinated when the exhibit was at the Utah state capitol and the rest of the events were canceled. The Panamint Ball did reach the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia so that the Nevada State Centennial Medals could be minted. As some know from Turner's articles, 20,000 medals were minted at the Philadelphia Mint but what many do not know is that 5,000 of these were proofs. This publicity event was based on historical fact. Senators William Morris Stewart and John P. Jones of Nevada used the Panamint Ball to deter bandits. I do not have information on the first reference to the Panamint ball in numismatic literature but the Final Report of the Nevada Centennial Commission pages 46 and 47 contain more information on the 1964 Nevada Centennial publicity event. John P. Jones is mentioned in Wells Fargo an Illustrated History, (Noel Loomis, 1968) as the co-owner of the Crown Point Mine in 1870 which earned he and his partner $30 million. (p.214.)"

Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum