New article on foreign coins in the early US economy 0

[RWB]

An article titled "Circulation of Foreign Gold and Silver Coins in the United States – 1826" is scheduled for publication by the American Numismatic Society in The American Journal of Numismatics.

In response to a resolution of the Senate, mint director Samuel Moore distributed a 3-page survey to Bank of the United States offices, Registers of Land, Receivers of Public Moneys, and large banks throughout the country. A surviving selection of replies provides a snapshot of foreign and domestic coins in public hands and how these varied from one region to another east of the Mississippi River.

[Zebo]

Cannot wait to read it - should be very interesting. Thanks

[RWB]

Should be out in a month or two -- or so I'm told.

[GoldFinger1969]

Basically, until the 1850's from what I read (maybe a few years or a decade or two earlier with the transition)....lots of foreign coins, especially gold coins, were basically accepted and traded and used in the U.S.

Spanish doubloons, British gold/silver, etc. 

Seems like about the 1830's the U.S. started to steal-back market share.....and then when the Double Eagle and California Gold Rush hit, all the U.S. gold coins really took off.  By the late-1800's, I doubt anybody NOT using paper money was eschewing U.S. gold or silver coins for foreign.

[Just Bob]

It will be interesting to see how this new information lines up with the books that I have on the subject. I already know that one of them has some numbers that have been proven to be wrong. I am curious about whether the other one is accurate or not , as well. If I remember right, both were written in the 60s.

[bstrauss3]

On 1/5/2023 at 12:52 AM, GoldFinger1969 said:

Basically, until the 1850's from what I read (maybe a few years or a decade or two earlier with the transition)....lots of foreign coins, especially gold coins, were basically accepted and traded and used in the U.S.

Spanish doubloons, British gold/silver, etc. 

Seems like about the 1830's the U.S. started to steal-back market share.....and then when the Double Eagle and California Gold Rush hit, all the U.S. gold coins really took off.  By the late-1800's, I doubt anybody NOT using paper money was eschewing U.S. gold or silver coins for foreign.

The coinage act of 1857 (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=011/llsl011.db&recNum=184) was the turning point. Until then, the Treasury, Federal offices, Post-Offices and Land-Offices received AND paid out non-Federal coinage at par or based on published tables. The "Spanish" (Mexican) Dollar was a dollar, just like a Federal coin. The act imposed a haircut - a Spanish dollar was now 80 cents Federal. And they were not paid back out - instead they were sent to Philadelphia to be recoined into federal money.

 

It was no longer legal for the Federal Government to pay out non-Federal coins. Also of interest is the requirement that the director of the mint assay foreign coins circulating in the US.

You can find these tables in the yearly reports. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/51?Year=1920&displayAmt=50.