"How The West Was Faked"

FWIW, I am familiar with the fake 1964 Lincoln cent errors, but have never
heard them associated with Paul Franklin before this thread.
Tom DeLorey
..
Subject: "How The West Was Faked"
From: Ed. Stoebenau
Date: 5/4/2004 7:58 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

On 1 May 2004 06:59:33 -0700, (John M.
Kleeberg) wrote:

(Michael E. Marotta) wrote in message
.com...
Is there any biographical data about
Paul Franklin?

Paul Gerow Franklin (originally called Gerow Paul, but he changed the
order of his first two names). Born, New York City, May 24, 1919.
Lived for much of his life at 30 Phillips Road, Massapequa Park, Long
Island; that's why Richard Picker named him "the Massapequa Mint." He
was a brilliant self-taught mechanical engineer. In 1958 he was
working for Telewave Labs in Long Island City. His collecting
interests included territorial gold, error coins,

Ok, that's definitely interesting. Are there any known or
suspected shady business of Franklin in the area of errors? What
especially seems to come to my memory is that I have read
(unfortunately I cannot remember from where) that there were/are
numerous 1964-dated "spectacular" counterfeit errors. (And
certainly it does appear that there are an abnormal number of
"spectacular" 1964 errors.) This would seem to fit into the
correct time frame. This is one of those questions that I've
been meaning to ask here for a while (or maybe more specifically
to Alan Herbert) as I'm wondering if: a) what I remember reading
is correct, and now b) is Franklin related to these?

Also, all the articles I've read on the 1969 (plain) 1c doubled
die counterfeits have certainly left many questions open, so
maybe I should ask about those.

and guns. He began
collecting in the 1930s and had contact with many of the dealers and
collectors of the older generation, perhaps most notably, Stephen K.
Nagy, who may have inspired Franklin to commence his career of
forgery. (Nagy made a lot of fakes too.) Ford and Franklin began
their dealings in western gold bars in 1952; Ford says they met at the
Brooklyn Coin Club, and both are listed as attending meetings in that
period. Franklin joined the New York Numismatic Club in 1958, when
one of his sponsors was John J. Ford. Franklin moved to Scottsdale,
Arizona, around 1963. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 13,
2000.

Look at lot 203 of the upcoming Stack's auction of May 11, 2004 for a
fake Washington counterstamp made by Paul G. Franklin in 1962, and
commendably cataloged as such.

Can I assume there's not (yet) a catalog of Franklin-produced
items, especially the non-territorial gold items?


--
Ed. Stoebenau
a #143

On the subject of the spelling of names:
The spelling of one's last name was a casual thing a century or more ago. I
have relatives all over central Nova Scotia and in the Boston area who spell
their name DeLorey, Delorey, DeLory, Delory and even the original DesLauriers.
After he was married around 1915, my grandfather, born in 1890, routinely used
DeLorey, DeLory and DesLauriers on his personal checks until his bank (with a
foolish obsession with detail) insisted he use just one. According to my
grandmother, he picked "the wrong one" (DeLorey) just to show them! I once got
the chance to speak with four of his sisters, and each one specifically said
their maiden name was DeLory.
Tom DeLorey
..
Subject: "How The West Was Faked"
From: (Michael E. Marotta)
Date: 5/2/2004 7:22 AM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

(John M. Kleeberg) wrote:
By the way, your observations about the fake Blake $20 in gold in the
Lilly collection were excellent, and are cited with approval in my
article on the website.

Wow, I am flattered... With the recent passing of my wife's parents,
we have been going through a mine and a mountain of family archives.
Her grandfather spelled his given named Ruben, Rubin, Ruebin, and
Reubin. Her grandmother spelled her maiden name both Kirt (preferred)
and Kurt (more common among other people). So, Schultz/Schults is not
surprising. The origin of the Agrell/Agnell problem was pretty clear.

Thank you for the biographical information about Paul Franklin. I
never sought the truth because I had insufficient faith for the man's
corporeal nature. I see that I was wrong.

Michael
ANA R-162953

On 1 May 2004 06:21:40 -0700, (John M.
Kleeberg) wrote:

Ed. Stoebenau wrote in message . ..
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/how/how.html

Hello Mr. Stoebenau,

Many thanks for reading the piece so carefully. I'll answer your
queries below.

I am not convinced that they have shown that Ford was
really involved with the fraud. (snip)

I'm not going to comment too much on how involved Ford was; I
admit a strong case can be made, but I'm sure cases will also be
made to clear his made and in this I want to wait until they are
made so both sides can be evaluated. Certainly his long-standing
friendship with Franklin doesn't look good, and some of his
condemnations of some Franklin pieces when he worked
independently would appear to be telling. The inventive
pedigrees also do not speak well for Ford, though maybe not in
the way you seem to be thinking, but more just as a general
measure of honesty. OTOH, if Ford was innocent but had a strong
suspicion of Franklin in the back of his mind, certainly
cognitive dissonance could work some strange things up. Also,
some of the errors made on the fake items suggest someone who was
not too knowledgeable about western numismatics. As the obvious
example, the "Blake and Agnell" items suggest someone who only
went to the obvious source available at the time, rather than
someone who immersed themselves in contemporary literature.
(Granted, how much weight this holds is dependent upon how it was
decided on what items to fake.) (It would also be interested
whether Ford (or Franklin) used "Agnell" or "Agrell" in any
writings in the 1950's in regards to this.)

I do think you have made a strong case; I just think this is one
of those cases where I have to think carefully about both sides.
I also will look up the _Numismatist_ references. One of the
good things about being a grad student is access to university
libraries, which in this case contains a nice run of the magazine
(though not quite complete. And, other than a large run of the
_Numismatist_ and ANS publications, the American numismatic
selection is actually horrible. But I'm getting beside the
point.)

Further, claiming that Ford called
people who sought after these pieces "boobs" seems to be horribly
out of context;

This usage has been confirmed to me by someone who knew Ford.

Ok, thanks.

it
would not be surprising for [Breen] to be fired for reasons other
than a supposed discovery of the counterfeit scheme.

I don't think Breen was fired for that reason. Breen's firing is
mentioned to explain why he divulged the information about the
Franklin forged counterstamp scheme (the Republic of Texas
counterstamp and other pieces).

Ok, I just re-read that part.

With the
Norwebs, Ford has stated that this involves the Boyd estate,

The Norweb family has told me that the falling out between Emery May
Norweb and John Ford was because of the Mexican gold bars.

Thanks again.

and
if it were the ingots instead, it would be odd why they kept at
least four fake ones.

Collectors often don't demand their money back about these things.
It's embarrassing to admit you've been fooled. Note that the only
bars that Mrs. Norweb may have known to be no good in her lifetime
would have been the Mexican bars; the Western Gold Bar matter only
broke publicly in 1996.

Ok. What I was wondering about is whether or not she would have
question the authenticity am the Dawson City and Kohler bars she
had received, even if they were not publically questioned. (I
was also thinking about the two Star Mining ingots, but now I see
they were later purchases.)

Third, I am unconvinced that they have shown the $41.68 Kohler
bar is a fake.

It is a very skillful forgery. Paul Franklin could do excellent work!
My arguments against the piece are the overpunching (which Kohler
wouldn't do - it would destroy all of his careful security devices)

I see this as the major argument (in the end, what would be
needed to determine the status of an ingot will have something to
do with the ingot itself), and the pedigrees only perhaps stating
something about the maker or marketing. And this Kohler bar
($41.68) is either a very good fake or authentic. I just don't
think the overpunching is a good enough argument. First, the
layout of the bar is the same to the genuine San Francisco Kohler
bars. Next, as far as can be told from the plates in Kagin and
Breen, there's no differences between the punches used on this
bar and the genuine bars. Third, the ratio between the stated
value to its weight and fineness are the same for this bar as for
the genuine bars. Other than layouts, the Norweb piece differs
from the genuine Sacramento piece in all these respects.

With regards to the changed weight, I find it difficult to know
what the psychology of Kohler would be with regards to this. As
to such an item being acceptable in commerce, Humbert had no
problem in overpunching the stated fineness of his coins, which
has the same effect. Early 20th century Honduran 2 centavos
coins are from reverse dies originally for 1 centavo coins. So
it wouldn't seem like this would condemn a bar in circulation.
As to how the overpunching was created, I think my original idea
of an error in initial placement of the value (which would start
with "41") is a real possibility and would (weakly) IMO lean
towards an error corrected by an assay the quick way rather than
a forger who can take a lot more time in their craft.

There's no reason why a more conclusive argument for
inauthenticity could not be given; it has been done for other
fake ingots; for example, an error in the stated fineness or
weight, a lack of punchlinks to the genuine pieces (especially if
all the genuine San Francisco pieces punchlink to each other), or
(less likely) punchlinks to other definite fake pieces would be
obvious methods. And on a more deceptive piece, a higher
standard would be needed to condemn it.

and the provenance problems. My sources for the contradictory
provenances are from draft revisions to the Red Book written by John
Ford in the early 1960s and an inventory of the Lilly Collection,
compiled a little later. Ford's account reads, "Discovered in the San
Francisco Bay Area in August, 1964. This piece was allegedly given by
Kohler to a Captain and owner of a (Sacramento?) river steamer, and
was retained by his family as a personal memento...." It was bought
"from the original owner's great, great grandchild, a woman
approaching middle age." This is a classic Ford story. It has this
marvelous pseudo-scholarly cautiousness - he's not going to decide
whether the steamer was on the Sacramento River, or possibly on
another river, and it gives us all the circumstantial detail - "a
woman approaching middle age" - that makes it sound real, but there's
nothing we can check, and nothing useful (names, dates, documents).
Why do we need to know that the seller was "a woman approaching middle
age"? There are some stories that we know, by examining them, that
they are designed to fool us. This is one of them.

The major problem with pedigree contradictions is how much weight
should be attached to these arguments, especially since you admit
that Ford also invented stories for genuine territorial issues.

snip

and other,
better arguments could in some cases be used. Punch linkages are
one obvious example, along with just plain look. For example,
the Eagle Mining Co. pieces just plain look laughably modern.

I haven't used the argument of "look" because it depends so much on
eye of the beholder,

Yeah, that's a good point. Especially since back in the mid-90's
when one of the Eagle Mining pieces went up to auction and Coin
World ran a story on it (93 or 94 ANA sale, though I really
cannot remember; though I do seem to recall it was a Heritage
sale; I cannot find any obvious specimen in your table to match
this one to, BTW.) the question of authenticity just never came
up for me, it rally is only in the past few months, especially
after the recent Baltimore ANA seminar and even more recent Coin
World article that its look became obvious.

snip


--
Ed. Stoebenau
a #143

Ed Stoebenau wrote: (snip)

Are there any known or
suspected shady business of Franklin in the area of errors?

I don't know of any, but I haven't begun to look yet. Franklin's New
York Numismatic Club application, when asked for his specialty, has
the response, "Mint Errors - Pioneer Coins + Assay Bars," so I know he
was interested in errors, but he may have just collected them and
didn't make them. A way to tackle this problem is to go through the
Numismatists for 1950-60 and read through the coin club minutes. (The
minutes stop being ample and useful in 1960.) Franklin regularly
exhibited at the Brooklyn Coin Club, and the minutes list the
exhibits. If a forged error shows up among his exhibits, then we'll
know. But sometimes the entry only reads "Paul Franklin - Freak
coins."

What
especially seems to come to my memory is that I have read
(unfortunately I cannot remember from where) that there were/are
numerous 1964-dated "spectacular" counterfeit errors. (And
certainly it does appear that there are an abnormal number of
"spectacular" 1964 errors.) This would seem to fit into the
correct time frame. This is one of those questions that I've
been meaning to ask here for a while (or maybe more specifically
to Alan Herbert) as I'm wondering if: a) what I remember reading
is correct, and now b) is Franklin related to these?

Breen, in his Encyclopedia, under number 2242, says that the
perpetrators of the fake 1964 errors went to prison, so presumably the
identities of the people who did this are known, and it seems to
exclude Franklin.

Also, all the articles I've read on the 1969 (plain) 1c doubled
die counterfeits have certainly left many questions open, so
maybe I should ask about those.

Those are by Mort Goodman, according to Breen's Encyclopedia, page
233. Goodman was prosecuted and convicted in Los Angeles, with Breen
testifying for the prosecution. I've seen this mentioned in
Penny-Wise for 1970, where Breen is mentioned as attending local EAC
meetings in Los Angeles because he's working on the trial.

Can I assume there's not (yet) a catalog of Franklin-produced
items, especially the non-territorial gold items?

I try to catalog everything in the tables in my article on the
website, but new information keeps on coming up and it takes a while
to revise my work. For example, I have incorporated some of the
information in the new edition of Brunk, but I haven't yet gone
through Brunk with a fine tooth comb, so there may be some
counterstamps I haven't listed yet. I did not know that the
Washington counterstamp of 1962 was attributed to Paul Franklin as the
forger until the Stack's catalog of the Ford sale came out. It is now
clear to me that the Irrawaddy Counting House silver bars are another
Massapequa job; I haven't yet listed them. Kolbe's auction of the
Ford library, lot 471, mentions Franklin making "sandwich electros" of
the Shultz $5 die overstruck on the Mexican 8 reales and of the CSA
half dollar. I haven't incorporated those into my catalog yet either.
Since Franklin (unlike John Bolen or Peter Rosa) worked illicitly and
didn't publish any catalogs of his work, it's difficult to compile a
complete list. It isn't just gold, unfortunately. Ford and Franklin
focused on gold in the beginning, because it began as a scheme to
launder hot gold when non-numismatic gold could not be legally held;
and the catalog, in the end, probably will be mostly gold; but
Franklin made forgeries in other metals too. The 1962 Washington
counterstamp is on a copper cartwheel twopence of 1797.

John M. Kleeberg

Ed. Stoebenau wrote in message . ..
I am not convinced that they have shown that Ford was
really involved with the fraud. (snip)

I'm not going to comment too much on how involved Ford was; I
admit a strong case can be made, but I'm sure cases will also be
made to clear his made and in this I want to wait until they are
made so both sides can be evaluated.

I'm returning to the question of Ford's involvement because it's an
important issue. Again, for me the most egregious example is Ford's
March 1964 Numismatist article, authenticating the fake Moffat bar
with a fake of a fake. But there's a lot of other evidence too. For
example, consider the episode that Harry X Boosel reported. Boosel is
looking for Saudi Arabian 4 dinar gold discs, and can't find any, and
then three show up in a Schulman sale and they are all forgeries. He
continues to ask around and meets Ford at a NYC auction, and Ford says
that a friend of his has some. Boosel meets the friend, and looks
through the two by two container, and there are fifteen Saudi Arabian
4 dinar gold discs - and they are all forgeries! He mentions this
episode to Louis Werner, and Louis Werner says, "Don't you know who
that is?! That's Franklin - he makes them for Ford!" So Louis Werner
thought Ford was involved in the forgery scheme.

Again, if Ford was Franklin's dupe, Paul Franklin will go down in
history as the man who conned John Ford. In Ford's cynical view of
the world, the way to do better in business is "to know more than the
other guy." If Franklin conned John Ford, he must be pretty darn
smart. Note what it says in the introduction to the October 2003
Stack's catalog: "if John Ford wanted the ashtray on the desk, there
had to be some previously undiscovered value to it because he was so
thorough about doing his homework." So let's rate these people in
terms of intelligence. Franklin's letter to Ford of October 1964 is
semi-literate. Six of the sentences lack a main verb. Here Franklin
is talking about suing people:

"If such a group as I just mentioned have secretly banded to-gether to
make statements,representations expressed either in print or writing,
tending to expose me to public contempt or ridicule, this is called ,
I believe, conspiracy. If it hurts my reputation by being malicious,
unfair or harmful, It is called defamation and is libelous."

I've transcribed that carefully to copy the incorrect spacing, the
incorrect capitalization, the omitted "have" at the beginning; I hope
that posts okay.

Paul Franklin has a little legal knowledge and he is getting himself
all twisted up. He mentions "print or writing," i.e. fixed in a
permanent form, which is an element that distinguishes libel from
slander, and then he bungs in conspiracy, which isn't really relevant
except insofar as he is trying to establish an "acting in concert"
joint tortfeasors claim. Then he returns to the elements of
defamation, introduces the question of malice, which is really a
public official/public figure issue that isn't relevant here, and then
he talks about defamation and makes it equivalent to libel, even
though defamation is a portmanteau word that is used to encompass both
libel and slander. He wrote his letter at the same time as the
Supreme Court's decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, so perhaps he
is reading a lot about libel in the newspapers and that may explain
where he's getting all these ideas, but he's got them all mixed up.
Now, I don't expect the average Joe to go and read all the way through
Sack on Defamation every time he writes a letter. But what does the
average intelligent person do when writing about this? Such a person
writes a sentence limited to what that person knows: "I believe I've
been defamed; I am going to consult a lawyer" - and leaves out these
irrelevancies about conspiracy.

Let's compare John Ford. Here's the letter that Ford wrote in the
1960s to Ted Buttrey about the finding of the Mexican gold bars:

"About 1951 a document was found in a Mexico City bookstore which told
the story of a Caribbean shipwreck of 1748. The ship had been heading
for Spain, carrying a quantity of gold bullion which must have run to
hundreds of kilograms. The ship sank before leaving the Caribbean,
but the gold (or some of it) was rescued and buried ashore to await
later recovery. The captain and crew were able to make their way back
by traveling over hundreds of miles on foot, around the northern and
western shores of the Caribbean, ultimately to Tampico.
"This document was recognizable as a copy of the captain's official
report, since certain notation indicated that an original existed in
Spain, in the Archives of the Indies. It included as well a sketch
map indicating the location of the treasure. The map bore no local
references, understandably since the shipwreck was terra incognita at
the time; but a diligent search of U.S. coastal maps by the group of
Americans who had obtained the colonial document in Mexico City
resulted in the identification of the spot at which the treasure had
been buried. The gold itself was subsequently found, on the west
coast of Florida, perhaps on one of the islands off Everglades
National Park...."

This is slick. Yes, there are some glaring mistakes, such as the fact
that there are many settlements on the northern Gulf coast in 1748
where the shipwrecked crew could have stopped and continued their
journey by ship, instead of proceeding on foot to Tampico (e.g. New
Orleans, and I believe Pensacola was settled by this time too). But
look at all the pseudo-scholarly apparatus - bookstores and
bibliophiles and archival research and studying maps of the US coastal
survey, and a reference to a National Park. We even have a nice bit
of Latin: "terra incognita." Which of these two men is smarter?
There's no contest. John Ford is much, much smarter than Paul
Franklin. Franklin is brilliant at mechanical tinkering. The
Massapequa forgeries, however, are the great forgery scheme of the
twentieth century, certainly as far as numismatics is concerned. A
scheme like that required a great brain - and that brain was John
Ford.

Now Ford is by no means the great scholar that some of his defenders
like to make him out to be. His lecture about European treaties,
given to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, was filled with mistakes
about the distinction between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars,
and he confused the effect on dates of shifting the calendar forward
by eleven days versus starting the New Year on January 1st as opposed
to March 25th. It's like his mistake about proceeding on foot to
Tampico. But these are mistakes by a man with a certain degree of
intelligence and education: the Tampico mistake shows us that he has
read about Cabeza de Vaca, although even he didn't walk that far.
These are different level of mistakes, compared to Franklin, who has
difficulty with basic English.

I also will look up the _Numismatist_ references. One of the
good things about being a grad student is access to university
libraries, which in this case contains a nice run of the magazine
(though not quite complete. And, other than a large run of the
_Numismatist_ and ANS publications, the American numismatic
selection is actually horrible. But I'm getting beside the
point.)

That is a great advantage. Many of those university libraries have
quite interesting holdings, often put together with a good deal of
thought.

Ok. What I was wondering about is whether or not she would have
questioned the authenticity am the Dawson City and Kohler bars she
had received, even if they were not publically questioned. (I
was also thinking about the two Star Mining ingots, but now I see
they were later purchases.)

I don't know if Mrs. Norweb questioned the western bars before she
died. She was a member of the Council of the American Numismatic
Society, and there was discussion about the problem in the Council,
but I don't remember seeing any minute where she expressed an opinion
about them. BTW, I think you were correct to include the Star Mining
bars in your query in the first place, since Mrs. Norweb bought them
in 1969.

Third, I am unconvinced that they have shown the $41.68 Kohler
bar is a fake.

It is a very skillful forgery. Paul Franklin could do excellent work!
My arguments against the piece are the overpunching (which Kohler
wouldn't do - it would destroy all of his careful security devices)

I see this as the major argument (in the end, what would be
needed to determine the status of an ingot will have something to
do with the ingot itself), and the pedigrees only perhaps stating
something about the maker or marketing. And this Kohler bar
($41.68) is either a very good fake or authentic. (snip)

There's no reason why a more conclusive argument for
inauthenticity could not be given; it has been done for other
fake ingots; for example, an error in the stated fineness or
weight, a lack of punchlinks to the genuine pieces (especially if
all the genuine San Francisco pieces punchlink to each other), or
(less likely) punchlinks to other definite fake pieces would be
obvious methods. And on a more deceptive piece, a higher
standard would be needed to condemn it.

Okay, consider this. Look at the numeral "6" on the $50 Kohler bar
that was in the Garrett sale (lot 911). Compare it with the numeral
"6" on the $41.68 bar - the best photo I have is in Kagin. You can do
this in Kagin, and you can do this in Breen, but the Kagin photos are
better, and for the $50 piece, the best photo is the enlargement in
the Garrett catalog. In the Garrett piece, the upper tail of the "6"
is so close to the loop that it appears to touch - no space there.
This is so even when blown up very big in the Garrett catalog. On the
Kagin photo of the $41.68, there is a visible space between the tail
of the "6" and the loop. So that numeral punch doesn't match.

Also look at the photos of the reverses of the Kohler bars in Kagin.
On the two pieces that I consider genuine - $37.31 and $50 - there is
a pattern of striations. It is most visible at the lower right on the
Kagin photo of the $37.31 piece, and at the upper right of the $50
piece. Those striations may come from a lid that Kohler put over the
molten gold when casting his bars. On the $41.68 piece, there is no
such pattern of striations. Also, on the $41.68 piece, Franklin
dressed the edges by hitting them with a hammer - smart - but he
overdid it a bit so that there are visible ridges on the reverse at
the edges. The other bars do have edges dressed with a hammer, but
not so severely as to raise ridges on the reverse.

On the Honduran 1 centavo/2 centavo issue: mistakes like that are
acceptable on low denomination coins. But when we are dealing with
gold, you have to wonder about it when you see a casual overpunching.
So far as the USAOG fineness change is concerned, good point, but that
alteration was made by punching into the die, and is raised, not
incuse. That's very tough to alter for the ordinary counterfeiter who
encounters the piece in circulation - not like an incuse overpunching,
which makes everything easy to alter.

BTW, you must be hanging out with Tom DeLorey if you know your
Honduran coinage by die variety.

Best regards,

John M. Kleeberg

Harry X Boosel used to be our consultant on the Saudi disks while I was at
ANACS, but I could never get him to explain WHY he was so utterly convinced
that certain pieces were counterfeit. He never mentioned this story to me, even
when I hypothesized to him that the different die styles between the
(allegedly) good and bad pieces was simply the result of the Philadelphia Mint
making non-standard dies by hand at different times using different assistant
engravers. To this day I remain unconvinced that any of them are bad, though I
remain open to the possibility that some are.
Tom DeLorey
P.S.: The worst Honduras dies had the denomination altered twice, from 10 CENTs
(on a die intended for a silver coin) to UN/10 CENTs, and later to 2/UN/10
CENTs.
..
Subject: "How The West Was Faked"
From: (John M. Kleeberg)
Date: 5/7/2004 3:50 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

Ed. Stoebenau wrote in message
...
I am not convinced that they have shown that Ford was
really involved with the fraud. (snip)

I'm not going to comment too much on how involved Ford was; I
admit a strong case can be made, but I'm sure cases will also be
made to clear his made and in this I want to wait until they are
made so both sides can be evaluated.

I'm returning to the question of Ford's involvement because it's an
important issue. Again, for me the most egregious example is Ford's
March 1964 Numismatist article, authenticating the fake Moffat bar
with a fake of a fake. But there's a lot of other evidence too. For
example, consider the episode that Harry X Boosel reported. Boosel is
looking for Saudi Arabian 4 dinar gold discs, and can't find any, and
then three show up in a Schulman sale and they are all forgeries. He
continues to ask around and meets Ford at a NYC auction, and Ford says
that a friend of his has some. Boosel meets the friend, and looks
through the two by two container, and there are fifteen Saudi Arabian
4 dinar gold discs - and they are all forgeries! He mentions this
episode to Louis Werner, and Louis Werner says, "Don't you know who
that is?! That's Franklin - he makes them for Ford!" So Louis Werner
thought Ford was involved in the forgery scheme.

nowspam (TomDeLorey) wrote in message ...
Harry X Boosel used to be our consultant on the Saudi disks while I was at
ANACS, but I could never get him to explain WHY he was so utterly convinced
that certain pieces were counterfeit. He never mentioned this story to me, (snip)

I plan to add a documentary appendix to the Kleeberg-Buttrey website,
but below is the full text of Boosel's lecture, which he delivered at
the ANA held in Chicago in 1966. I'll add further comments about your
observations next week, but need to consult some more references to do
so.

Best,

John M. Kleeberg

2. Harry X Boosel's lecture about Paul Franklin and John Ford's
forgeries of Saudi Arabian 4 dinar gold discs, 1966.
"Those Saudi Arabian Gold Discs: Additional details, not published in
the article in the July 1959 Numismatist"

by Harry X Boosel

Shortly after King Farouk was deposed, Mr. F. K. Saab, at a
meeting of the Chicago Club, displayed both a large and a small Saudi
disc, in gold.
I know Saab very well, and being very intrigued by the discs, asked
him if I could buy a set from him. He said that he had several sets
but they were in a vault in Egypt and that it would be extremely
difficult to get any out.
However, I persisted, and about 1954 I was able to obtain a set from
Saab for about $100. I continued to research the coins to find out
why the United States would make gold coins for a foreign country with
the U S eagle on them.
The story was finally published in the July 1959 Numismatist.
During the interim I was able to obtain another small disc from Saudi
Arabia, and another one from an auction by Steinberg in Florida. This
left me with three small and one large disc.
I conceived the idea of getting two more large ones, or at least one
more large one to make up sets, and eventually sell them. About 1958,
the larger ones began appearing in Schulman's auctions. But they
consistently were selling at about $175, which I was not willing to
pay.
So I kept bidding at $150 and finally in late 1958 I was successful –
not only did I get one, but I got three at one time at $150 each. I
really didn't want three, and so I examined the three very closely and
finally came to the decision that all three were counterfeit! The
details of the difference appear in the article.
I returned all three to Hans, whom I know very well, with a short
note merely indicating that I thought the three were not genuine. I
did not wish to enter into lengthy details or arguments, merely said I
thought them not genuine.
Back came a letter from Hans – asking me details, since he wished to
know all about them – he said it was for his benefit in business.
I like Hans, and felt he was sincere, so I sat down and started to
write him the details, but then I figured that if he didn't have an
original, he wouldn't know what I was talking about. So I decided to
send him my original, with the note. I sent it registered mail,
return receipt, deliver to addressee only – and surely figured that he
would send it back the same way.
About a week later I received a note from Hans that he saw the
difference and was sending my coin back. I waited about a month and
still no coin. I wrote him and asked for the coin. It turned out
that he gave it to a clerk to send it back and he sent it insured and
it was lost. I was paid for it but I now had no large discs and three
small ones.
At every show and every dealer I saw after that, I tried to get
another large disc, but those I saw were all counterfeit.
Finally in 1959, while in New York attending a business seminar, I
attended a coin auction at a hotel. It was either in June 1959 or in
November 1959. At the auction, John Ford was present, and somehow I
was talking about the discs and indicated that I was looking for a
large one. Ford introduced me to his friend Franklin, and said that
Franklin had some. In my talk with Franklin, he said that he had been
"buying" these discs and had about a dozen, and would I care to look
at them. I said I would be happy to do so. He said that he would
bring them to the auction in the hotel the next day.
He did so – took out a coin box with about 15 of them, in a variety
of envelopes. I looked them over one at a time, carefully, and all
were the same counterfeit!
I later talked to Louis Werner, and mentioned what had taken place.
He said to me, "Don't you know who that is? That's Franklin – he
makes them for Ford!"
With so many in one place, I began to doubt what I knew, and finally
I remembered Vern Brown was the Curator at Chase, and I had talked to
him about the discs at one time or another. So I called him and asked
if the Chase still had discs and when had they obtained them. He told
me yes, they still had them, and had obtained them shortly after they
were made. I asked him if I could examine them, and he said sure.
So next noon I went there, he took them out of the case, and there we
were, originals.
Since I had written the article, some dealers had looked upon me as
an expert in the Saudi discs and in 1964, at the Cleveland convention,
as I entered the bourse room, Sol Kaplan grabbed me and asked me to
authenticate some large discs he had just bought.
I took them up to the room and they were genuine. Sid Smith also
grabbed me and asked me to look at some he had – they, too, were
genuine. I was able to purchase one from each to make sets, which I
sold a few years ago.
At the '64 convention, apparently someone had brought in a dozen and
had sold some to Sol and some to Sid. Even today, I still get an
occasional disc from Sid for authentication.
At the Round Table here in Chicago, I told Hoskins that I would be
happy to authenticate any he might be having trouble with, and
referred him to my July 1959 article.