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H. C. KENDRICK OF BOSTON: NO DEMAND FOR GOLD DOLLARS
John Lupia submitted the following in response to an article in last week's issue. Thanks!
-Editor
As a follow up to Dave Ginsburg's "Gold Coin Use in the East in 1896", I thought I'd share with him and our fellow NBS members, and aficionados a postal card sent by H. C. Kendrick of Boston. Kendrick ran the Exchange Office at 15 State Street. The Chapman Brothers, Samuel Hudson & Henry, Jr., frequently wrote to him as a source for silver and gold coins for their inventory as well as a source to sell their surplus to. In May of 1894 they apparently queried him of his interest in buying some of their surplus gold dollars, and Kendrick wrote in reply : "We have over 200 Gold dollars on hand, and there is no demand for them whatsoever."
There are many pieces of mail in the Lupia Numismatic Library, Special Collection, The Chapman Family Correspondence Archive relating to gold and its market from the late 1870's to the late 1940's. This is just one of about 1,400 postal cards alone, not including well over 25,000 other pieces of mail. Dave Ginsburg adds: Readers may recall that noted numismatic researcher Roger Burdette published an article titled “Gold Dollars Used for Jewelry” in Issue 4 (Autumn 2013) of the Journal of Numismatic Research, which is an expanded version of an article he published in the April 17, 2006 issue of Coin World. The article highlights some letters and reports from Mint and Treasury officials from 1887 and 1888 that discuss the lack of demand for gold dollars for circulation and state that the only demand for them is from jewelers who use the coins in “. . . necklaces, bangles, studs, buttons, et cetera.” It appears that, by 1894, even that demand had abated.
To read the complete article, see:
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
Wayne Homren, Editor 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@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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