INTERVIEW: CARSON CITY AUTHOR RUSTY GOE

Coin World: What led you to develop an interest in the Carson City Mint and its coinage?

Rusty Goe: Eight mints have stamped coins in eight different cities in the United States, beginning with the main one at Philadelphia, and most recently at the West Point branch. As a coin collector first and for the past 35 years as a coin dealer, I have been interested in the history and coinage production of all eight of these mints. But early on in my career as a coin dealer, I found it rather easy for me to develop a fervent fondness for the mint that operated in Carson City, Nevada. This is probably because I started dealing in coins while living at Lake Tahoe, which is only about 30 minutes from Carson City, and probably because of the way numismatic writers portrayed the Carson City Mint as being so colorful and storybook-like, and its coins as being so captivating and filled with mystique.

Yet I must say, the full charm, heightened value, and magic of the Carson City Mint and its coins did not capture my mind full force all at once. My fascination with the “CC” mintmark and all that it represents has evolved through the years, in direct correlation with the time and energy I have expended in building my knowledge base of the related subjects. There is a sense of wonder that increases incrementally the more absorbed I become with the lore surrounding the Carson City Mint and its coins.

CW: What was the most surprising previously unknown fact that you uncovered during research for your books?

RG: Oh, there are so many answers to this question. But let me just cite a few examples.

Foremost, in my first book, The Mint on Carson Street, I only devoted a handful of paragraphs to Carson City Mint superintendent James Crawford, and I speculated that he was only about 50 years old when he died. After publishing that book, I set a goal to find out more about Crawford, a man who had overseen the Carson City Mint for more than 10 years, and had supervised the production of 85% of all the coins ever manufactured at the Nevada branch. How could it be, I thought, that so little information survived about such a prominent person in Nevada history and in the annals of U.S. Mint history? For gosh sakes, it seemed woeful to me that his age at death was uncertain, and that no photographs of him existed. I wanted to at least write an essay about Crawford, if not a pamphlet-sized manuscript.

My four-year research quest resulted in a 650-page biography titled, James Crawford: Master of the Mint at Carson City – A Short Full Life, which we published in 2007. In it I revealed that Crawford died at the age of 52 years and 3 months; and I was excited to include several images of him.

Second, I discovered a fact four years after the release of my book about Crawford that I had wished I could have included in that book, because it pertained to a significant event that happened under Crawford’s watch. While doing research for another writing project, I found an obscure news briefing in a Nevada newspaper from April 1876 that revealed that the Carson City Mint had coined the one and only output of 1876 twenty-cent pieces (or double dimes) in March that year. This is the third rarest date-denomination that has survived from the Carson City Mint, with only 18 specimens extant, and until my discovery writers had always speculated that the total mintage of 10,000 pieces had been struck sometime before the end of June 1876. Now we know that it happened in March.

To read the complete article, see:
Editor’s Q&A: Sitting down with a Carson City Mint expert (www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2016/12/editor-q-and-a-rusty-goe-carson-city-mint-expert.html#)

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