STACK'S BOWERS: STACK TERRITORIAL GOLD

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 3, 2026, Article 25

Stack's Bowers will be selling the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection – Part II on February 3. Select Territorial Gold items are discussed below. -Garrett

1830 Templeton Reid $2.50. K-1. Rarity-6. AU-58 (PCGS). CAC. The rarity of this issue makes it notable to coin collectors, as its population of fewer than 25 known specimens in all grades puts those who own any Templeton Reid coin into an exclusive club indeed. Lots of things are rare though, and while rarity is necessary, it is insufficient on its own to give a collectible the sort of stature a gold coin struck by Templeton Reid enjoys. Its real importance is historical, and if there were 500 Templeton Reid coins to choose from that significance would be undiminished. Private gold coins are a vital part of America's numismatic story. With apologies to Mssrs. Brasher and Barry, whose golden contributions to the Confederation-era money supply were issued under very different circumstances, the story of private and territorial gold begins with Templeton Reid.

America's first gold rush began in North Carolina in 1799, when John Reed's son Conrad discovered gold on the family farm north of Charlotte. The same geological feature that brought gold to the surface in North Carolina was present in Georgia. When stories began to emerge around 1829 of gold on Cherokee lands in Georgia, new settlers rushed into the area, buoyed by Andrew Jackson's December 1829 State of the Union address, which first detailed his planned Indian removal policy. With the 1830 Indian Removal Act, federal policy blessed what was already happening on the ground in the gold regions of Georgia: abundant new miners drawn by the promises of gold.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from Henry Chapman's sale of the Arthur C. Nygren Collection, April 1924, lot 21; Hillyer Ryder Collection; Ryder Estate, February 1928; sold en bloc to Wayte Raymond, May 1945; Wayte Raymond to James A. Stack, Sr., ca. 1947.

1849 Moffat & Co. $5. K-4. Rarity-4. MS-63 (PCGS). CAC. CMQ. A distinctively important example, preserved by famed California minter John Glover Kellogg, who worked for Moffat in 1849 as the firm's cashier.

The October 1916 Thomas Elder sale of coins from the collection of John Glover Kellogg was his first consignment from Kellogg's son, but not the last. Hillyer Ryder bought this coin from Elder's sale of March 1924, a catalog headlined THE EDWARD KELLOGG COLLECTION AND OTHERS. The fourth day of the sale was entitled "COLLECTION OF THE LATE EDWARD KELLOGG, Son of Mr. Kellogg, who Struck the Private Gold. SOLD BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES." A Proof 1855 Kellogg $50 led off, followed by 14 more lots of private gold coins. Lot 2250 was described as "1849. $5.00 Moffat & Co. Head to left. S. M. V. CALIFORNIA GOLD. About uncirculated. The best one we have had."

Though a few nice examples have sold privately, acquiring a better example at public auction appears to be a once-a-generation endeavor. Hillyer Ryder had already been collecting territorial gold for a decade when he bought this in 1924. Until today, that remains this coin's lone auction appearance.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from the personal collection of John Glover Kellogg; Edward Kellogg, by descent; Thomas Elder's sale of March 1924, lot 2250; Hillyer Ryder Collection; Ryder Estate, February 1928; sold en bloc to Wayte Raymond, May 1945; Wayte Raymond to James A. Stack, Sr., ca. 1947.

1851 Augustus Humbert $50. Lettered Edge. K-2. Rarity-5. 50 DC, 880 THOUS., No 50 on Reverse. AU-55 (PCGS). CAC. CMQ. This is a simply incredible specimen of this important historical coinage, described by Kagin and McCarthy as "the earliest U.S. Government issues in California." The lettered edge $50 slugs were first struck on January 31, 1851, shortly after Augustus Humbert arrived in San Francisco with the necessary tools in hand. The majestic eagle on the obverse was accomplished by America's most highly regarded medalist, Charles Cushing Wright of New York. The reverse die, with its fine engine turned details, resembles watch cases of the era, unquestionably the work of Humbert, a former watchcase maker himself.

For modern collectors, there is not a single issue that symbolizes the California Gold Rush better than a Humbert $50 slug. They are massive and iconic, recognizable even outside the realm of numismatics, an encapsulation of the dramatic wealth and excess of the Gold Rush era. Though any Humbert slug is desirable, the lettered edge types of 1851 came first and remain the hardest to locate in nice grade. The Kagin-McCarthy book estimates that about 100 specimens of this variety, with the 880 THOUS obverse and no denomination on the reverse, exist today. Most are damaged, many are in institutional holdings, and very few are prettier than this.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from the John H. Clapp Collection; Clapp estate, 1942; Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection, via Stack's; our (Stack's) sale of the H.R. Lee Collection, October 1947, lot 1906.

1852/1 Augustus Humbert $10 Gold. K-8. Rarity-5. MS-62 (PCGS). CAC. CMQ. Even the most advanced specialists have likely never seen an 1852/1 Humbert $10 like this, as it was last offered well over a century ago. It appears to be one of Hillyer Ryder's earliest territorial gold purchases, acquired from the 1913 sale of the collection of Malcolm N. Jackson. Cataloged by Wayte Raymond during his days at the United States Coin Company, it is now most remembered for its uniform high condition. Based upon Raymond's introduction, he could have seen that coming:

This denomination was first conceived in 1851, but confirmation from Washington that coinage of $10 and $20 "small denomination" could commence didn't arrive until the following year. These were first struck in February 1852, and this overdated die was undoubtedly the first put into service, a match for the 1852/1 $20 coins struck under the same circumstances. It's been over a decade since we've offered one of these in any grade; the last, in March 2014, was graded PCGS VF-20. This denomination saw heavy circulation while these coins fulfilled a desperate need in commerce. The fact that this coin was spared from that is remarkable. We haven't offered an example certified AU or better since 2004.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from U.S. Coin Company's sale of the Malcolm N. Jackson Collection, May 1913, lot 378; Hillyer Ryder Collection; Ryder Estate, February 1928; sold en bloc to Wayte Raymond, May 1945; Wayte Raymond to James A. Stack, Sr., ca. 1947.

1853 United States Assay Office of Gold $20. K-17. Rarity-6-. 884 THOUS. MS-63 (PCGS). CMQ. The 884 THOUS issues of 1853 struck by the United States Assay Office were the penultimate gold coins coined in San Francisco before the establishment of the San Francisco Mint, struck before the 900 THOUS type that turned out to be a transition to full Federal control over gold coining in San Francisco. Political maneuvers to kill the Assay Office had resulted in a requirement that future issues be struck in the standard .900 fineness required by Federal law - all well and good for paper pushers in DC, of course, but impossible for the coiners without a ready supply of the parting acids required to refine gold to that level of purity. Dies were made for the new .900 issues, but the refining of deposits to that standard was a non-starter in the beginning of 1853. Of course, the demands of the commercial community of California continued, so the locals determined to strike coins of .884 fineness until a supply of acids became available. According to Kagin and McCarthy, "production of these coins began on February 23, 1853" and continued for only a week or so. Mintages were tiny of both the 884 THOUS $10 and $20 pieces, with modern extant populations estimated to be just a dozen or so for the smaller denomination and perhaps twice that number for the $20s like this one.

This coin, unseen since Lyman Low sold it in 1916, has never appeared on any Condition Census of this type, though it ranks among the very finest known. While acquisition of any specimen of this historic and short-lived issue is a feat, acquisition of a better one is a possibility only in the realms of fantasy.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from Lyman Low's sale of May 1916, lot 227; Hillyer Ryder Collection; Ryder Estate, February 1928; sold en bloc to Wayte Raymond, May 1945; Wayte Raymond to James A. Stack, Sr., ca. 1947.

Undated (1849) Miners Bank $10. K-1. Rarity-5+. MS-62 (PCGS). CAC. CMQ. This coin is a golden example of no good deed going unpunished. When the Miners' Bank was first a going concern in downtown San Francisco in early 1849, they were cashing checks "in gold dust turned out of a bottle with a spoon into a bit of brown paper," according to a contemporary observation reprinted in the 2023 Kagin and McCarthy book. Thinking that coins of standard value might be a bit easier to handle than hand-rolled twists of gold dust, the Miners' Bank moved forward with a plan to create coins from their gold dust deposits. In August 1849, the bank gave a coining contract to the partnership of Kohler and Company, composed of the future state and United States Assay Office assayer Frederick Kohler and fellow New Yorker David Broderick. An attempt to have the Federal authorities at the port accept their coins for duty failed, and the Kohler firm's lack of assaying experience became evident as their productions were first panned by the assayers of the Philadelphia Mint and then by the commercial community at large. The coins did not last long in circulation, and most were melted in short order. Today, most of the known coins show little wear. Two-thirds of the pieces PCGS has certified are graded between AU-53 and MS-60.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from our (Stack's) sale of the E.M. Wharton Collection, October 1945, lot 2562.

1850 Baldwin & Co. $10. K-3. Rarity-6. MS-61 (PCGS). CMQ. In a landscape of designs that largely echo Federal types, mostly amateurishly rendered at best and downright crude at worst, Baldwin's "Horseman" $10 stands out. If it was only a rarity, the coin would still see abundant demand, but the distinctiveness of its designs make this type among the most famous and avidly sought of all California gold pieces. The obverse was inspired by an 1831 print entitled "Californians Throwing the Lasso," published in Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Straight by F.W. Beechy after a watercolor by William Smyth. The print, and engraver Albrecht Kuner's fine imitation of it, show the typical dress of a vaquero or horseman in Spanish California, the original American cowboys and the etymological origin of the slang "buckaroo." (For a real rarity, try to find a copy of the Numismatic Perspective #2, published in July 2003 by American Numismatic Rarities, where this connection was first published.)

The Baldwin & Company firm rose from the ashes of the coining concern behind the Miners' Bank $10 coins of 1849. Frederick D. Kohler, a New York jeweler, was trying his hand at the assaying trade. Kohler's career was ascendent in 1850, as were his aspirations, and he planned to issue coins in his own name struck from dies engraved by Kuner. Just a single copper pattern of Kohler's Horseman $10 survives, struck from the same obverse as the coin seen here. His plans were aborted, and he sold his business to a pair of fellow New York jewelers named Baldwin and Holman. This fine (and, no doubt, expensive) obverse die was sold with the business, and the newly formed Baldwin & Company employed it on a short run of gold $10 coins sometime after April 1850. The first example reached the assayers of the Philadelphia Mint shortly thereafter, and Eckfeldt and Du Bois determined that the example of this coinage they tested contained $9.96 worth of gold.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from B. Max Mehl's sale of the Frederick W. Geiss Collection; February 1947, lot 2189.

1851 Baldwin & Co. $10. K-4. Rarity-6+. AU-58 (PCGS). CMQ. The typical softness of the 1851 Baldwin $10s underscores the issues the Baldwin operation had with their equipment. The Horseman type required two strikes to bring it up to full relief. While the first edition Kagin reference suggests these were struck from "concave dies," it appears they really just had trouble achieving sufficient striking pressure to fully strike up the central devices. This piece, like all 1851 Baldwin $10s we've seen, was struck just once. Unlike most, it shows a nearly full strike, a remarkable contrast to most surviving examples.

The first appearance we find of an 1851 Baldwin $10 at auction was in Lyman Low's July 1902 sale of the collection of Georg F. Ulex of Hamburg, Germany. Rich with good territorial gold coins (and lots of other rarities), lot 570 was included on a laid-in addendum sheet. Low described the 1851 Baldwin $10 issue, deeming it "extremely rare," but then continuing on at Low-like length: "I find no record in the 409 auction sales that have taken place during the past 19 years, and do not know if a public offering of this piece was made even prior to that time." Low couldn't find one, and we couldn't either.

This specimen first appears on the published record in 1914, when H.O. Granberg of Oshkosh, Wisconsin displayed it at the American Numismatic Society's Exhibition of United States and Colonial Coins. Coins from the Granberg Collection are illustrated on Plates 34 through 36 of the Exhibition catalog, along with one coin on Plate 37. This coin is photographed on Plate 36. The same exact photograph appears again in three different Wayte Raymond publications. First, Raymond used this coin to illustrate his 1931 Private Gold Coins Struck in the United States, 1830-1861, where this coin is plated on page 15. Next, this coin appears in the July 1939 issue of Wayte Raymond's Coin Collectors Journal, a house organ that was both an important journal of its era and a sales vehicle for Raymond's inventory and auctions. This coin is offered with a one-line description on page 75, calling it "Extremely Fine and of the highest rarity" with a hefty retail price of $600, and is illustrated on the following page. The same illustration turns up again in Wayte Raymond's Standard Catalogue, where this piece continues as the plate coin through the famous 1957 18th Edition, which incorporated research and writing by John J. Ford, Jr. and Walter Breen. While Granberg's coins appeared in three B. Max Mehl auctions in the 1910s and a U.S. Coin Company auction of Wayte Raymond's in 1915, some of his rarities transacted privately, and this appears to be one of them.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from the collection of H.O. Granberg, who displayed it at the ANS Exhibition of 1914; Wayte Raymond, July 1939; B. Max Mehl's sale of the Frederick W. Geiss Collection; February 1947, lot 2190. Plated in Private Gold Coins Struck in the United States 1831-1860 by Wayte Raymond, 1931 (page 15) and the Standard Catalogue of United States Coins, 1957 and earlier editions.

1851 Schultz & Co. $5. K-1. Rarity-6+. EF Details--Repaired (PCGS). The two surest ways to make money in Gold Rush California were to sell miners their supplies or to determine ways to purchase their gold dust. Banking establishments in the Gold Rush regions took on the latter challenge and saw huge sums of money cross their counters. While taking the gold in was easy, turning it into dollars was a greater challenge. The Schultz and Company firm was established to help turn dust into dollars in the most literal way: organized as a foundry firm, a brisk business in making coining dies led to a decision to make dies in their own names while acting as a front for two large local banks. Partner William Garratt, a mechanic from Ohio, was profiled in an 1891 work entitled The Builders of a Great City: San Francisco's Representative Men, and much of what we know about the Schultz & Company operation comes from this source. Formed in October 1850 in partnership with the elusive Judge G.W. Schultz (sometimes Shultz or, as on his coins, Shults), "the firm at the beginning, besides mechanical work, also made all the coin dies in use here in private coining, except those of Mr. Moffat, whose $50 slugs will be remembered by all old-timers."

Little is known of Schultz, but his mining business didn't go too well: in 1855, they were dragged in print by The Butte Record, a newspaper in Chico to whom they owed $18.

The coinage of Schultz and Company also managed to get dragged in the press, during a famous hubbub sparked by the banker James King of William in March 1851. As Kagin wrote, "on the 21st of that month, King sent $180 in face value of Baldwin, Schultz, and Dubosq coins to U.S. Assayer Augustus Humbert to be assayed." Humbert tossed 45 Schultz & Co. $5 coins into his fires and determined that, even including their silver content, they were worth just $4.87 each. The commercial community objected, business sputtered, and the California legislature's act of April 15, 1851 criminalized undervalue private gold coins. The game was up, and the Schultz enterprise was ended.

When Eckfeldt and Du Bois of the Philadelphia Mint published an assay result showing a Schultz $5 was worth $4.97, it was too late. Nearly all Schultz coins were melted, and few survived their useful lives as coins to become collectibles.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier, from the collection of H.L. Hill, San Francisco; Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. Collection, ca. 1936; Stack's sale of the H.R. Lee Collection, October 1947, lot 1881.

1849 Oregon Exchange Company $5. K-1. Rarity-5+. EF-45 (PCGS). CAC. CMQ-X. Many Oregonians who traveled to California to seek their fortune in the gold fields returned home bringing with them quantities of nuggets and gold dust. As with their neighbors in California, local money was in short supply and use of gold dust as a medium of exchange was fraught with difficulties. To address this issue, the Oregon Exchange Company was established by several prominent Oregon City residents in early 1849. The obverse of the five dollar coins bears a rustic depiction of a beaver on a log and the initials of the company officers who contributed to the purchase of the coining equipment: Kilborn, Magruder, Taylor, Abernethy, Willson, Rector, Campbell (which was erroneously entered as a G), and Smith. The T. O. - another die engraver error - represents Oregon Territory. This transposition was corrected on the $10 denomination. William Kilborn, the first named, was the highest profile of the founders, serving as treasurer of the Oregon Territory's provisional government.

While no effort was made to standardize the alloy, the coiners compensated for this by deliberating making the coins overweight. U. S. Mint assays report that the five dollar coins were valued at $5.50. This helped to guarantee their acceptance, but being worth more than their stated value ensured that the pieces would be taken in at face and melted down for their intrinsic value. It has been estimated that roughly 6,000 of the $5 coins were produced before minting operations ceased in September 1849 when their two crucibles broke and the company decided to disband. "Beaver Money," as the coins were soon nicknamed proved popular in commerce as evidenced by the wide range of grades seen on modern survivors.

Provenance: From the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection. Earlier from the Dr. Russell H. Renz Collection; B. Max Mehl's A Royal Sale, March 1948, lot 3922.

Wow! The U.S. coins in the James A. Stack, Sr. Collection are amazing, but the territorial gold is equally amazing - many great, high condition pieces here. Great opportunity for today's collectors. -Editor