BOOK REVIEW: THE DOLLAR OF 1804

Review: The Dollar of 1804; The U.S. Mint’s Hidden Secret…as revealed by the true story of the “Dexter Dollar,” the King of American Coins, by Mark Ferguson, Numisma Publishing, 2014

This book has an interesting story to tell, and it would have been better if the author had limited the book to that story and skipped the collateral information and the speculation. We first find speculation in the title, which describes “the US Mint’s hidden secret as revealed by the true story of the Dexter dollar.” Ferguson doesn’t make a convincing case about any “hidden secret” or how the Dexter dollar “reveals” it. Two whoppers on the front cover is never a good start.

The discovery of the Dexter specimen has been shrouded in mystery for 130 years. It likely appeared in a group lot in an 1879 auction by Adolf Weyl in Germany. The Chapmans bought it in 1884 from another Weyl auction with no pedigree and no guarantee of genuineness, though the book reveals that they had returned a coin to Weyl’s auction company previously for a refund, so they probably thought the risk was acceptable. They sold it in their own auction in 1885 to James V. Dexter, who proceeded to sue them in the belief, fostered by the Chapmans’ competitor Édouard Frossard, that it was a fake.

The shadowy discovery of the coin and other issues led many to suspect that the Chapmans got the coin in Philadelphia (from the Mint, Haseltine, Idler, or whom?) and planted it in the Weyl auction. Never mind that the 1804 dollars Haseltine was selling in those years were all Type IIIs, and the Dexter coin is a Type I. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, Newman and Bressett repeated this then-current notion in their 1962 book, The Fantastic 1804 Dollar. Ferguson, however, has uncovered enough evidence that the Chapmans did NOT plant the coin to convince most other than ardent grassy knoll/Area 51/birther conspiracy theorists.

Ferguson has also uncovered a lot of evidence that once Dexter was convinced that it was genuine, he really LOVED his coin, having commissioned two works of art commemorating it. Both are illustrated in color in the book, but alas, they are illustrated in a very tiny, and so illegible, format. I would love to have had a link to an enlarged version of these plates on the Internet, as both have lots of small text, and the artwork looks to be excellent. Ferguson also reveals that Dexter, a wealthy Colorado mine owner, had quite an extensive coin collection. This apparently was not previously known, because his collection passed to family members and was not sold under the Dexter name.

The above story is told in the first 10 chapters. Chapter 11 discusses the recent market value of the coin, chapter 12 describes the coin in more detail than anyone probably needs and gives the most current slab grade of every known specimen of the 1834-5 Type I “originals” and the later Type II and II “restrikes.”

Chapter 13 gives the discovery source for all 15 specimens of all three types. This information is probably useful to collectors planning on purchasing a specimen, but I found it distracted from the story of the Dexter specimen.

Chapter 14, “The US Mint’s Hidden Secret as Revealed by the True Story of the Dexter Dollar,” the main point of the book, if you take the title at face value, gums things up. He retells the story, well-known since 1962, of the proof sets struck for the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat and how the 1804 silver dollar and gold Eagle came to be included in these diplomatic presentation sets.

Unfortunately, the Dexter dollar had nothing to do with this important discovery, which tells us the coin was struck in 1834 or soon thereafter. At the end of the chapter, Ferguson, himself treads into grassy knoll/Area 51/birther territory by suggesting that the 19,570 dollars reported struck in 1804 were dated 1804 and that all were sent to Tripoli as part of a $60,000 ransom paid to free American sailors held hostage.

This notion has been thoroughly debunked over the years; first, because of the facts that the early Mint frequently struck coins that did not bear the date of the year in which they were coined; and second, because the U.S. government did not strike gold or silver coins for its own account in the early days, but strictly in payment to bullion depositors.

Specie that came to the federal government came in the form of tax receipts, so to believe Ferguson’s story requires you to believe that all 19,570 were paid out to the bullion depositors, paid back to the government in taxes, and then all were shipped overseas, without a single specimen surviving.

It isn’t possible to prove all this never happened, but to suggest that it did stretches all credulity. This chapter also contains a very cheap shot at Newman and Bressett by discussing and illustrating a chapter of their book containing erroneous information that was deleted before their book was published.

Two other criticisms I have are that there is a lot of unnecessary repetition and that none of the information is sourced. The book could have used a more rigorous editing job. There are no footnotes, endnotes or list of other references used. There are some very strong claims made, and they require evidence, but it isn’t presented.

That said, I enjoyed most of the book. The first two-thirds are a good and interesting read. The rest I found to be unnecessary, speculative and even unfairly critical of others. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the King of American Coins, as I was, but I strongly urge skepticism about the “fantastic” tale that all of the original 1804 dollars were paid as ransom to the Barbary pirates.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NEW BOOK: THE DOLLAR OF 1804 (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n16a03.html)
BOOK REVIEW: THE DOLLAR OF 1804 (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n22a09.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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