CHAPMAN-WEYL 1804 DOLLAR CORRESPONDENCE

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 29, July 17, 2016, Article 7

I have a few comments about the recent Coin World article appearing on pages 38-41 of the July 18, 2016 issue, “A Great Rarity Makes its World Debut,” which pertains to the Dexter 1804 Dollar and the 1884 Weyl catalog. When I purchased my copy of the Weyl catalog from George Kolbe at the 1996 Denver ANA convention I had no idea how very rare this catalog is – just 3 or 4 known. George told me that Eric Newman came to his table to see the catalog, but I had already purchased it.

I was merely collecting items pertaining to the Dexter Dollar saga while piecing together its story, a few years after I acquired two original artworks James V. Dexter commissioned in 1887 in honor of the coin. It was very fitting that I purchased the Weyl catalog from George in Denver, as that is where J.V. Dexter resided until his passing in 1899. Dexter also spent a great deal of time in Leadville, Colorado.

At the next ANA convention in Denver, in 2006, I gave a lecture about the coin’s history for the Maynard Sundman Lecture Series. I’m extremely grateful to Brent Pogue who brought the actual Dexter Dollar to the convention so it could be displayed for my lecture, along with my collection of Dexter Dollar documents and memorabilia, including the Weyl catalog.

One evening during that week I set out to find where Dexter’s mansion stood. To my surprise, the mansion, which was torn down in the 1930s, used to stand at the other end of the convention center from where our convention took place! The coin had come home. Earlier that year I also spent two days in Dallas with Brent and Richard Burdick where we examined, in their “raw” state, both 1804 silver dollars Brent owns. What a treat that was - thank you once again Brent and Richard!

Regarding the letterpress copies of the Chapmans’ 1884-1885 letters I discovered in the ANS archives in 2013 while doing research for my book, The Dollar of 1804 – The U.S. Mint’s Hidden Secret, the recent Coin World article stated, “there may be some small room for doubt about the Chapmans’ motivation for copying these letters.” I believe that doubt originated with a mere rumor started by Edouard Frossard in an 1885 letter to James Dexter in which Frossard insinuated that the Chapman brothers “claim to have bought [the coin] there,” meaning in Germany, from Weyl.

That rumor was given further elevation in the 1962 book, The Fantastic 1804 Dollar, by Eric Newman and Ken Bressett, in which they stated, “The real truth about the mix-up of the photographs can be reconstructed with a little imagination.” They went on to spin a tale of how the Dollar was planted or laundered through the Weyl sale to give it a “fancy foreign pedigree,” while its source was really in Philadelphia.

Given the high regard we all have for Eric and Ken, and that most numismatists believe they answered all the questions about 1804 silver dollars in their book, and that very few people research 1804 Dollars, that tale has more or less become accepted as fact – that the Dexter Dollar was planted in the 1884 Weyl sale as a cover-up for obtaining it in Philadelphia.

I believe the letterpress copies that I discovered in the ANS archives convincingly put this matter to rest, once and for all. I have discussed the Chapmans’ letterpress copies at length with David Hill, archivist and librarian of the ANS, and Dr. Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the ANS. They have each expressed to me that they believe, as I do, that the letterpress copies are real and have not been faked. Here are some reasons we believe they’re the real thing:

1. The letterpress copies were private records of S.H. and H. Chapmans’ business correspondence, not meant for publication.

2. The letterpress copies were bound in books in chronological order by date along with copies of other regular, day-to-day business correspondence.

3. The bound letterpress copies stayed with the Chapman family until being donated to the ANS in 2002.

4. The letters were written over several months, between September 12, 1884 and February 13, 1885.

5. There was a language barrier between the Chapmans and Weyl, regarding English and German, and the translations of particular words and sentences and their meanings. Some were misconstrued.

6. An obvious problem arose in the transaction; the Chapmans expected to obtain the coin before sending the money and Weyl wanted the money before sending the coin. The solution was to hire an agent, Charles H. Meyer, German Consul in Philadelphia, to receive and disburse the money and the coin.

7. One letterpress copy, No. 259, can be matched to a photograph which appears in the 1941 W.F. Dunham catalog by B. Max Mehl, of a real letter written to J.V. Dexter on June 3, 1885, stating that the Chapmans guarantee the 1804 Dollar bought by Mr. Dexter to be genuine. All of the hand-writing and spacing of the letterpress copy match precisely that of the real letter photographed and illustrated in the Dunham catalog.

I hope this information and what’s published in my book, The Dollar of 1804 – The U.S. Mint’s Hidden Secret, is convincing evidence that the Chapman brothers legitimately purchased, what’s now known as the Dexter Dollar, from the 1884 Adolph Weyl sale in Berlin, Germany. My book can be purchased at www.1804Dollar.com. I wrote it to educate and to entertain.

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 ... conspiracy theorists.