FALSE WESTERN (AND DAWSON CITY, Y.T.) GOLD BARS
by Robert D. Leonard

On March 16, 1996 the American NumismaticSociety presented T.V. Buttrey withthe Huntington Medal in recognition of outstandingachievement in numismatic scholarship.As is customary, he delivered a lecture,though not on one of his usual themes:"False Western Gold Bars," published withrevisions in the American Journal of Numismatics9, 1997.

In this outspoken critiqueof an entire genre, he condemned as modernfantasies all Western gold bars that cameto market since the early 1950s, the CentralAmerica bars excepted: "...it is my personaljudgment that the western American gold bars which began to appear in the 1950s are false, all of them, and that they are twentieth-century fabrications contrived to appeal to our interest in the history of the American West."

To say that this shocking charge was controversial would be an understatement. When Ted Buttrey told me this at the International Numismatic Congress in Berlin in 1997,I couldn't believe him. All of them? Surely some were genuine. I accepted that many were bogus, but thought that some, at least, must be original. But I becameconvinced he was right, and he has finally convinced nearly everyone.

One thing that delayed acceptance of his position wasthat these bars had been sold as genuine by all theleading dealers in the United States: John J. Ford,Jr.; Stack's; Bowers &Merena; Kagin; NASCA;Rarcoa; and Superior. They were listed in DonaldH. Kagin's Private Gold Coins and Patterns of theUnited States and some were even included in the"Red Book" for a time. All these dealers objected toButtrey's thesis strenuously, and Ford had previouslythreatened to sue anyone who rejected them as fake.(He successfully prevented Buttrey's previous articleon this subject, "False Mexican Colonial Gold Bars,"from being published in the United States, where theywere being sold, and it had to run instead in AcademiaMexicana de Estudios Numismaticos.)

Some dealers responded with a paper by MichaelHodder, a consultant for Stack's and an acolyte ofFord, at the ANS Groves Forum, April 10, 1999.Hodder attempted to refute Buttrey by first questioninghis qualifications (a big mistake) and then changingthe subject from "gold bars" to "assay bars." Iresponded to this with a Guest Commentary in CoinWorld, May 17, 1999, exposing this as a "straw man"argument; the mixed metal assay bars were noncontroversialand outside the group Buttrey condemned.

Even Hodder admitted that some of the gold bars wereof questionable authenticity, but I could not bringmyself then to believe that Buttrey was right to condemnthem all.

In an ad in Coin World, July 12, 1999, Stack's - whohad a lot to lose if all the gold bars they had sold overthe years were exposed as phony - challenged Buttreyto a debate on the subject of "western assay bars" atthe 1999 ANA Convention in Chicago, with MichaelHodder representing them. Buttrey accepted the challenge,setting the stage for the "Great Debate." Itwas held August 12, 1999 in front of a large audience(both Buttrey and Hodder mentioned me,Buttrey in his presentation, Hodder acknowledgingthat I was present).

While Buttrey laid out the reasonsfor doubting the authenticity of the gold bars,showing an error in Hodder's paper and proving theso-called Brother Jonathan bars were fake, his angerand arrogance - particularly his personal attacks onJohn Ford and Michael Hodder and announcementof a lawsuit - turned the audience against him, andHodder could be said to have won the debate.However, others present, particularly CentralAmerica curator Bob Evans and Western mining expertFred Holabird, were satisfied that the gold barswere bogus, and began writing articles and givingpresentations exposing the falsity of one piece afteranother.

Former ANS curator of United States coinsJohn Kleeberg prepared a website with Buttrey, "Howthe West Was Faked" (http://www.cawa.fr/IMG/pdf/how.pdf), which laid out the case against authenticityin great detail. John Ford became ill, and hislibrary and correspondence came on the market, someof which was very revealing.

Researcher and authorKarl V. Moulton studied this correspondence and publisheda magisterial work, John J. Ford and the"Franklin Hoard" (the author: 2013). Q. DavidBowers read the manuscript for this book and wasconvinced he had been "had" by Ford. Don Kagin,working on a second edition of Private Gold Coinsand Patterns of the United States, wanted to purgehis book of the many fakes he had ignorantly included,and began hosting panels at ANA conventionsto discuss particular items.

Buttrey and Kleeberg had accused John Ford of orchestratingthe gold bar fraud, using his associate PaulFranklin (called Gerow Paul Franklin by Moulton todistinguish him from his son, also named PaulFranklin) to make them ("How the West Was Faked").However, Moulton is not convinced (though he mayhave tempered his views because he depended on thecooperation of Paul Franklin's son); he suggests thepossibility of other forgers supplying Franklin. PaulFranklin did admit to making a few fantasy items forFord at different times, though.

So it may well be that Ford, who thought that he wassmarter than anyone, may himself have been the dupe(at least for a time); if so, then Paul Franklin's letterto him of November 23, 1964 was possibly the greatestcommunication ever made by a confidence manto his mark. In it, Franklin claimed that no one hehad sold a coin to had ever returned it, but admittedthat his activities had led him to being accused ofoperating the "Massapequa Mint" (he lived inMassapequa, NY, for a time) and said that he wasbeing unjustly ridiculed and defamed. In any case, itcertainly worked; Ford responded on December 1,stating "I realize that it was written from the heart."He also indicated that he still had confidence that the "Franklin Hoard" of U.S. Assay Office of Golddouble eagles, then under attack, was genuine, andasked Franklin to investigate further. (These coinswere condemned by ANA authenticator J.P. Martinin 1994 and were positively proven false in a PioneerGold Forum sponsored by Kagin's at the 2008ANA convention.)

Whoever made them, all these fake gold bars passedthrough the hands of one man: Paul Franklin. Whilea Paul Franklin pedigree is not a sure-fire sign offalsity, it does not inspire confidence. In the summerof 1955 he returned from a trip to the West with severalitems that were previously unknown (as were allhis offerings): among these were an Adams &Co.$54.33 gold ingot, 1851; a James King of William$20 gold piece (also supposed to have been made in1851); and a $140 Dawson City, Y.T. gold ingot dated1898 (Moulton, p. 255).

The James King of William$20 ingot is illustrated in the 13th edition of A GuideBook of United States Coins, 1960 (the Red Book),and - despite having a loop attached, as though it hadbeen preserved by being made into a fob - has nochance of being authentic; the name is given as "Jas.King of William &Co.," but King never used thisstyle: he was always "James King, of Wm." (Evidentlythe forger read about King in a history of SanFrancisco without realizing his business style; besideshis personal name being rendered wrong, therewas no "& Co." either.) Also, he was a banker, notan assayer, and would never have issued an "assaybar." As for the Adams and Dawson City bars, ineach case the value is incorrect.

The Adams &Co. bar is stamped 57 1/12 DWT$54.33, .881 fine. But this weight of gold would beworth that much only for a gold value of $21.61/oz.;its true value would be $51.98.

The "Dawson City, Y.T." bar is even worse: $140Canadian = $140.00 U.S. at the time. The ingot issaid to weigh 7 OZ. 0 DWT 17 GRS, or 7 x 480 =3360 grains + 17 grains = 3377 grains. It is supposedlyonly .9184 fine, so it contains only 3101.44grains of pure gold. (I will ignore the silver becausethe fineness is so high.) Dividing by 480 (the numberof grains per ounce), we have 6.46 oz. pure. Multiplyingby 20.6718 (the official gold price) gives$133.57, not $140.00. So this ingot "carries its owncredentials" - as a fake. Here the gold is calculatedon a value exactly $1 per ounce too high - $21.67.Obviously the forger forgot what the gold price wasthen, using two similar, but different prices for theAdams and Dawson ingots. These are among 28 barswith incorrect valuations. Genuine bars are normallyaccurate pretty much to the cent.

John Ford paid $450 for the Dawson $140 bar, thensold it to the Norwebs for $5,250 August 21, 1955(Moulton pp. 257, 263) - a nice profit.

A second "Dawson City, Y.T." bar exists (Scott A.Simpson and Leslie C. Hill, Yukon Trade Tokens,Vancouver Numismatic Society, 1979, p. 22). Thisis overdated 1899/8, with a value of $130 and withan additional counterstamp of the Dawson branch ofthe Bank of British North America. This bar is notin "How the West Was Forged," and Simpson andHill do not give a weight, so the accuracy of the valueshown cannot be checked. But the additionalcounterstamp is a touch found on other Paul Franklinbars: many of the false Mexican Colonial bars bearan additional counterstamp (of impossible date), andthe Argenti &Co. bar he sold has additionalcounterstamps of A. Humbert, assayer and Schulz &Co.

To summarize: The Dawson City, Y.T. 1898 goldbar was sold with a group of California gold barsdated a half century earlier by the man who suppliedall of the gold bars denounced by Ted Buttrey andothers. There is nothing to connect it to Canada orthe late 1890s. And the value stamped is based on agold value $1 per ounce too high. It is a Paul Franklinfantasy of 1955.

Sources:

Kagin, Donald H., Phd.; Private Gold Coins andPatterns of the United States, 1981.

Kleeberg, John M., How the West was Faked: FalseWestern Gold Bars and other Forgeries (http://www.cawa.fr/IMG/pdf/how.pdf).

Moulton, Karl V.; John J. Ford and the "FranklinHoard", 2013.

Simpson, Scott A. and Leslie C. Hill, Yukon TradeTokens, Vancouver Numismatic Society, 1979.

Dick Hanscom wrote in the issue: