Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-03-05
DOLLARS OF 1904
NUMBERED 10000
Entire Number Sent to Tripoli
to Pay Sailors, Says
Numismatist.


Cleopatra just after the famous gen
eral returned after his conquest of
the invading hosts Of Egypt, aud
| whose circulation was limited to leo
pieces according TO a numismatoloz
| gist, who makes his home in Mime
| apolis.
ITO commence WITH said this stu
| dent of the world coinage To q jour
nal reporter, after reading Of the tSo4
/ dollar said 10 have been found IN
! New Haven. Conn last Mcek, ami
valued at So, 800. there i an Aaiert9
can dollar worth many times more
! than the 1904 dollar-that 81 l>f>
| None. today. are known ana among
coin collectors generally II Is 0SheNed
| that none exists. Yet K l. an eftl-
| cial fact that 1868 dies were made.
and six proofs, as they are Called,
! impressed between the dies and reed
| ing hubs of the United states Mint
| in Philadelphia. But Congress failed
| to provide for dollar eotn9ge that
/ year. and none was officially struck.
/ What became of the six proofs none
| knows, but il is generally supposed
! they were thrown back into the cru
eibles of the mint. melted and poured
again into the smaller coinage Of
| that year. Just try some time and
see if you can pick up silver half
dollar of 1865. Many were made. but
| they are rare today.
Why They Are Scarce.
But of the 1904 dollar. worth today
whatever the finder chooses to ask
| for it. and with many purchasers in
| the market, strange as il may seem,
over 10000 were turned out. The rea-
son of their scarcity is that the en-
! tire output was sent over to the pay
| 90 he nj n
three men-of-w war then lying of Tri-
| poll, on the African coast. The sailors
! got them as pay, carried them ashore
and it is thought all We're traded to
| the natives for such supplies as were
| obtainable, much after the fashion
of men, o -warsmen even to the pres
ent day.
Coins of that size were new to the
people of that far-away and savage
country, for nothing ever reached II
except few English silver pieces,
and England coined nothing so large
as our dollar AS a result OF this
trading the dollars were scattered
among the tribesmen from Tunis to
Egypt and found their way ultimate
ly into the hands of the little bands
of wandering Bedouins making their
homes in the GASES of the Sahara.
LAS a circulating medium to these
rovers to the desert the dollar traded
by the United States Jackie had little
or no value, but as the basis for the
manufacture of silver jewelry, the
dark skinned sons of kano and Wadai
bartered for them wherever found,
for they knew no silver coin of that
size. One of the few now existing of
the genuine 1904 dollars, remembering
that many spurious exist, was found
hanging to an armulet of a desert
chief of the Ghadames tribe, which
makes it's home in the oasis that bears
it's name. 1t had descended from
father to son, and is now one of the
prizes of the famous collection of
Boston. 1t cost the brothers over
1000, and was purchased by them
forty odd years ago.
Traded to Africans.
"Coin collectors generally believe all
| but probably a dozen or so were trad
ed to the African natives along the
| east coast and made by them into
ornaments for personal adornment,
much after the fashion of the Navajos
and Pueblos of our own day The few
not thus destroyed are thought to
have been brought home in the ditty
bags of some homewardbound men O.
warsmen and preserved as pocket
pieces, gradually to be discovered and
sold at fabulous prices to collectors
ut is not so strange went on the
coin enthusiast, that this dollar
should have been found in New
Haven, Conn., for if genuine, this is
the second 1904 dollar the little city
of the Elms has unearthed. The most
perfect 1904 dollar known is in the pos
session of a coin and stamp company
of New York, and occupies a place of
honor next to the widows mite once
owned by Henry Ward Beecher, and
given by him to Doctor Funk, of the
publishing house of Funk & Wagnals.
This 1904 dollar was found in an
old cracked blue china sugar bowl
with pewter rim, in the home of an
old lady who lived at Savin Rocks,
a suburb of New Haven. She only
recalled that her father. a whaling
captain sailing from The Thimbles'
and 'Sachem's Head just east of the
college city, the former being popu-
larly believed to have been the island
home of Captain Kidd, had given it
to her. telling her that his uncle. a
bosuns mate, who had shipped under
| Commodore Perry in foreign seas,
had brought it home to him. The
coin brought the white-haired little
lady something over 5000. One by
| one, here and there, 1904 dollars have
| been picked up until probably a dozen
genuine ones are known to exist.
Several Hundred COunterfeits.
But that does not prevent probably
| several hundred ardent coin collectors
throughout the country from proudly
| exhibiting what they firmly believe
to be genuine 1904 dollars, but they
are spurious, for the coin has been
several times more or less success
fully counterfeited. One of the first
ccunterfeits known of this piece was
what mint men designate as a mold
ed coin-that is, made from plaster
of paris mold. Like all nodded coun-
| terfeits. it lacks the sharply defined
lines of a pressed coin, and has the
| greasy feeling of all nodded pieces
due to a lack of pressure in the MAX
ing. These were sold by men who
lust happened to get them in change
and, learning it had some value,
called on the collector to find out
The latter, unless an absolute novice
quickly detected the fraud and few
were disposed of
"A little bit later. however, mem
hers of the Lupo and Morella gang Cd
counterfeiters in New York, seven OF
whom, by the way, are now DOING
from seventeen to thirty-tlve years
each in the Federal prison at Atlanta
Ga, for a dozen years of successful
counterfeiting of current American
coin, conceived the idea of putting oui
a bad 1904 dollar Mechanics anC
engravers 'Lupo the Wolf and Gui'
seppi Morella had in plenty. They
even had a heavy hydraulic press
/, such as governments use to make
genuine pressed coin. They had {
die sunk. but having them as model
used an old silver dollar of about tina
period, with the Goddess of Libert,
bust and indented rims, without reed
ing or milling, and dated 1904 Al
were aged in sand by rubbing, Man,
of these were sklfully disposed of t.
collectors. who. thinking because the,