"How The West Was Faked"

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/how/how.html

This is a website put together by John Kleeburg and T V Buttrey,
about fake western assay bars, mainly those made in the 1950's
and later. It is, for the most part, very well done, though of
course I do have some quibbles I'll list below.

The subject is on fake assay bars, territorial coins, and related
issues they claim (and IMO supported more than well enough) were
made by Paul Franklin starting in the 1950's. These include many
bars, in fact most gold ingots not counting those from the SS
Central American Hoard, "pattern" US Assay Office pieces, and
some private coins, mainly pieces supposedly by Blake, Bowie,
Diana House, and a couple others. Through various means, they
claim that these items are modern fakes. These include a lack of
assay cuts, improper use of tax stamps, wrong logotypes for
ingots of which genuine issues are known, gold purity which is
too high, grossly mislabeled fineness, and so forth. It is
claimed that these were made by Paul Franklin, who supposedly
traveled the southwest searching out these pieces, or in reality,
stayed in New York making them (though it is also know that he
did visit the west to have modern assay firms make him some
ingots themselves). It is claimed that he then had John Ford/New
Netherlands market them to unwilling collectors. The Kleeburg
piece (very long, BTW) is very well done going into much detail
about all the pieces. Buttrey has some supplemental pieces about
the marketing of the fakes and whatnot.

I do have some issues about the page however. First, Buttrey's
pieces are, to put it nicely, undiplomatic. It would appear that
according to him anyone who has sold these pieces (either
knowingly or unknowingly) or has defended any of the pieces as
authentic is somehow directly involved in the fraud in unethical
ways. These of course include Franklin (well, no surprise), Ford
(more on this below), Stack's (apparently because Ford at one
time wrote parts of some auction catalogs for them with ingots in
them), Michael Hodder (occasional poster here, apparently only
because he works for Stack's (but never at the same time Ford
helped out) and has defended some of the pieces), and Q David
Bowers/Bowers & Ruddy/Merena (though nowhere near as harshly as
the others, mainly apparently for being too credulous or
something).

Second, I am not convinced that they have shown that Ford was
really involved with the fraud. We know he was friends with
Franklin, and marketed the pieces over a period of decades. But
he also appears to have actively collected the same pieces, and
considered them legitimate collectibles and real rarities rather
than say, gem Morgan dollars. Further, claiming that Ford called
people who sought after these pieces "boobs" seems to be horribly
out of context; that sounds more like something Ford would call
collectors of gem Morgan dollars, registry sets, and whatnot
rather than ingots thought by many people at the time to be
genuine and quite rare. Other circumstantial evidence they bring
up (NN's firing of Breen, Fords falling out with the Norwebs,
NN's ads WTB Latin American gold) do not seem to lend much
weight. Breen shall we say was eccentric and impersonable (I
don't think there were at that time anything know about his child
molestations (if anything had occurred by that time) and so it
would not be surprising for him to be fired for reasons other
than a supposed discovery of the counterfeit scheme. With the
Norwebs, Ford has stated that this involves the Boyd estate, and
if it were the ingots instead, it would be odd why they kept at
least four fake ones. The Latin American WTB ads, NN had at
least one client at the time (Norweb) who collected them. So I
think a blind spot/duped Ford is a possibility, rather then him
being knowingly involved. (OTOH, there are some questions which
do not make perfect sense under such a theory.)

Third, I am unconvinced that they have shown the $41.68 Kohler
bar is a fake. Their evidence for this is that the weight of the
piece had an overpunching and a pedigree starting in the 1960's
including what _may_ be a contradiction (but that is far from
certain in this case). However, the plates of this piece (Kagin
and Breen) while not so great, do appear to match the style of
the genuine Kohler bars, and even appear to likely have the same
punches, which is not the case for the other Kohler bar they
declare fake (and I agree with them there.) The overpunching
(which Kleeburg claim means the forger made an error in math) can
be explained more easily by the maker of the piece thinking he
was punching in the value rather than the weight (that it is a
46/1 seems to support this). Also, a forger would have no
problem melting down his mistake and starting over, while Kohler
would not want to waste the time in doing that, perhaps. The
pedigree also does not appear to go through Franklin (or Ford),
the Breen states it did go through New Netherlands (but this is
likely an error, given what is reported in the Smithsonian
archives according to Kleeburg). A better analysis of the
punches used on this piece I think would be in order.

Fourth, I think some arguments Kleeburg makes could use some work
(most importantly, being careful differentiating between
transportation ingots and coin ingots, and between
characteristics of pieces made in different locales) 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.
And, going through the Clifford catalog, I think there's a real
chance these could be punchlinked to "American Flag", Star Mining
Co, North Star Mine, Knight & Co, F G Hoard, and G W Bell. I
would not be surprised if other punch link series could be made,
which would be impossible if the pieces were genuine.

Finally, images are very much needed for a webpage such as this
one, but they are next to nothing here.

All in all, a very highly recommended site to digest; it is just
the sort of comprehensive set of information on western ingots I
would want to have seen.


--
Ed. Stoebenau
a #143

On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:45:27 -0500, Ed. Stoebenau
wrote:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/how/how.html

Oops, this is the more general URL I should have posted:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/


--
Ed. Stoebenau
a #143

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:30:18 -0500, Ed. Stoebenau
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:45:27 -0500, Ed. Stoebenau
wrote:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/how/how.html

Oops, this is the more general URL I should have posted:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/tvb1/


Ed, Thanks for the most interesting link. It will take some time to
digest this information and even then I fear I will be too ignorant to
comment.

Ed. Stoebenau wrote:
The subject is on fake assay bars, territorial coins, and related
issues they claim (and IMO supported more than well enough) were
made by Paul Franklin starting in the 1950's.

Eric P. Newman is about a generation older than John J. Ford. They
have an old, irreparable dispute going back about 40 years. Buttrey
and Hodder are only seconds continuing the duel for the principals.
These four men have biographies. Is there any biographical data about
Paul Franklin?

Second, I am not convinced that they have shown that Ford was
really involved with the fraud. We know he was friends with
Franklin, and marketed the pieces over a period of decades.

Ford takes the hits because Ford has a visibility that Paul Franklin
does not. Ford's biographical interview in the Heritage magazine
outlines his early years as a numismatic prodigy, running coins
between the New York City dealers, and tells of his U.S. military
service in World War II in counter-intelligence. After the War, he
traveled a bit, out West, if I am correct, touring the country, and
came home to New York City.

John J. Ford has a long and illustrious career in numismatics. If you
have the auction catalogs of his estate from Stack's, you will see
that he was always attracted to those dusty areas that others seemed
not to perceive. Indian Peace Medals are a perfect example. Many
newly significant facets of American numismatics carry his stamp. He
was a founder for the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, for instance.
In his defense at a PNG arbitration hearing over a proof assay coin,
he summarized his efforts in identifying and condemning fakes at a
time when few others were so assiduous. He has since retired to
Arizona and is battling fiercely for both his wife's and his own
health and well-being.

... Breen shall we say was eccentric and impersonable ... and so it
would not be surprising for him to be fired for reasons other
than a supposed discovery of the counterfeit scheme.

Ford says that he hauled Breen out of a VA hospital and brought him to
New Netherlands. If you read the campfire tales about those days, it
would be difficult to find a true humanitarian in the bunch. I never
met Breen, but I have never read of him being "impersonable." He is
always smiling for the camera, at least.

the Eagle Mining Co. pieces just plain look laughably modern.
And, going through the Clifford catalog, ...

Generally speaking, these bars were sold first to a wider range of
collectors. Clifford got interested in them and bought many. His
estate sale catalog was the definitive presentation of this
population. There was no standard against which to contrast the
internal inconsistencies among the auction lots. The raising of the
Brother Jonathan cargo may have provided that.

All in all, a very highly recommended site to digest; it is just
the sort of comprehensive set of information on western ingots I
would want to have seen.

It is pretty easy to write an ad for Morgan Dollars that evokes
gunfighters, pioneers, Indians, and the cavalry. Assay Bars are a
small part of that. Consider how often here in RCC we get a post from
someone who has a "California Half Dollar." Even in the 1870s -- if
not earlier -- many were made by jewelers to be sold to tourists. Not
everyone on the frontier had a stake in the outcome. Consider the
rage for cowboy movies in the 1940s. The frontier had closed only a
generation before and already it was mythic. In 2002-2003, I devoted a
lot of time and effort to New Mexico History. The towns are there; the
people are there; the records are there. Yet, so many questions
remain that legends grow faster than sage. We all want to believe.

Michael
"Yellow Ribbon at High Noon in the OK Corral"

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)

Consider these two points. First, Ford has produced, again and again,
false stories concerning the origins of the fake material. If we
assume that Ford was Franklin's dupe, then Ford would just repeat,
verbatim, over and over, the same false story. Ford doesn't always do
that. Ford has produced one false story; and then, when that story
doesn't stand up, he has come out with another one - which is equally
false. He did that with the Mexican gold bars: he claimed that there
was a map in an archive in Mexico City, that led the finders of the
bars to the shipwreck. When that fell apart, he wrote letters saying
that there was no documentation at all. He said the shipwreck was
from the 1740s; then he said it was from the 1780s. He said he first
found the bars in the Boyd Estate; yet Paul Franklin was already
displaying a Mexican bar in September 1954, four years before Boyd
died. With the "Franklin Hoard" of USAOG items, he first claimed (in
the Numismatist in 1963) that the "hoard" was bought from a descendant
of an associate of Augustus Humbert. In his defense of the "hoard" in
1967 he came out with his absurd story of the teller and the multiple
kilos of gold in the bank in Arizona. Don Taxay told him at the time
that the story was not believable. Yet Ford never went back to
Franklin and squeezed him to find out the truth - instead, he just
repeated the same old claptrap in his Legacy interview. The
pseudo-Brother Jonathan bars provide another instance. Ford said, "I
went to the archives of the San Francisco Mint and found that the
madam, Mrs. Keenan, got these bars from the Mint." Well, Buttrey has
shown that that evidence just isn't there. The Bowie $5 is another
example. When Henry Clifford first published it in 1961, it was put
out as a new discovery. In 1983, another example was published as a
new discovery; and in 2000, a third. Then Ford tells Bowers,
according to a footnote in Bowers' book on the Central America, that
all three pieces were obtained by Paul Franklin in one go! If Ford's
a dupe, why does he keep on changing the stories; and why are all the
stories false?

Second point. If you have access to a set of the Numismatist, compare
two articles: June 1940, page 411, and March 1964, page 309. In the
first article F. C. C. Boyd and Stack's very commendably identify and
condemn a forgery of a Moffat bar. In the second article John Ford
tries to authenticate the same forgery (not the same bar, but clearly
the same forger - same dies and manufacturing methods) by the fake of
the fake technique. This is where a forger makes a skillful forgery,
then makes a crude forgery of the skillful piece, publishes an article
condemning the crude forgery, and by implication authenticates the
skillful forgery. Ford does this in the March 1964 article. It
contains and condemns two crude forgeries of Moffat bars; one crude
forgery of a real Moffat bar, and another crude forgery of the forged
Moffat bar. The article says of the forged bar, "The rarer piece was
examined, photographed and authenticated by John J. Ford several years
ago." This sneaky method of "authenticating" the 1940 forgery damns
him.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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)
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.

Fourth, I think some arguments Kleeberg makes could use some work
(most importantly, being careful differentiating between
transportation ingots and coin ingots,

I've mentioned this here and there in the paper (if it's going to
circulate, the pieces will be small and should have some edge
protection device; if it's on its way to the Philadelphia, London and
Paris Mints the bars will be large), but I'll emphasize this more in
the revision.

and between
characteristics of pieces made in different locales)

My examination of the pieces led me to conclude that bars do change in
their forms over time, but not so much over space (because it was an
international gold market). Thus the Bechtlers stamped a gold value
that was below the par value on their coins, but by the time of the
Central America the bars are being stamped with the value of $20.6718.
Likewise, Moffat used carats for the fineness of his bars, but the
Central America bars are in thousandths, and Molitor says that that
has become the standard - carats don't measure fineness well enough.

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, although I agree that it can be the most
convincing. A curator at the American Museum of Natural History said
to me once, "Fakes only retain credibility in the time that they are
made," and perhaps, as we move further and further away from 1950s,
these fakes, too, will look sillier and sillier to us - just as bell
bottoms and platform shoes look silly.

And, going through the Clifford catalog, I think there's a real
chance these could be punchlinked to "American Flag", Star Mining
Co, North Star Mine, Knight & Co, F G Hoard, and G W Bell. I
would not be surprised if other punch link series could be made,
which would be impossible if the pieces were genuine.

I've looked at punch linkages, didn't have any luck with them, and
then decided to approach the bars differently. I concluded that
Franklin was just too darn careful. But in the new edition of Brunk's
book on countermarks, a number of phony countermarks are identified
(F. D. Kohler, Republic of Texas, Union Mine) and the catalog says
that the pieces are punchlinked. So he wasn't always that careful!
So punch linkages should be looked at again.

Finally, images are very much needed for a webpage such as this
one, but they are next to nothing here.

We'll try to address this matter.


All in all, a very highly recommended site to digest; it is just
the sort of comprehensive set of information on western ingots I
would want to have seen.

Thanks again!

John M. Kleeberg

(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, 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.

In his defense at a PNG arbitration hearing over a proof assay coin,
Ford summarized his efforts in identifying and condemning fakes at a
time when few others were so assiduous.

Well, yes. By putting himself forward as a great authority on fakes
and counterfeits, Ford had the perfect cover to market forgeries.
Take a look at the March 1964 Numismatist article, page 309, for an
example of Ford wearing his "authenticator" hat to authenticate a fake
Moffat bar (condemned as fake in the Numismatist, June 1940, page
411).

The USAOG 1853 $20 proofs (the subject of the PNG hearing to which you
refer) are discussed on the website and condemned as fakes. This is
not an original discovery. The ANA has pronounced those pieces "not
genuine" on at least two separate occasions (see Numismatist, February
1994 for one of those occasions).

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.

John M. Kleeberg

(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 30 Apr 2004 06:08:21 -0700, (Michael E.
Marotta) wrote:

Ed. Stoebenau wrote:
The subject is on fake assay bars, territorial coins, and related
issues they claim (and IMO supported more than well enough) were
made by Paul Franklin starting in the 1950's.

Eric P. Newman is about a generation older than John J. Ford.

Minor correct, I think they are both around the same ages. (In
any case, w/ Ford being in his 80's, Newman cannot be too much
older.)


... Breen shall we say was eccentric and impersonable ... and so it
would not be surprising for him to be fired for reasons other
than a supposed discovery of the counterfeit scheme.

Ford says that he hauled Breen out of a VA hospital and brought him to
New Netherlands. If you read the campfire tales about those days, it
would be difficult to find a true humanitarian in the bunch. I never
met Breen, but I have never read of him being "impersonable." He is
always smiling for the camera, at least.

Point taken. I probably should have left it at eccentric.


--
Ed. Stoebenau
a #143

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

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

I asked Alan Herbert some time ago if he knew anything about this, but Paul
Franklin was before his time. But I don't think Franklin had anything to do
with cent errors, as his specialty was gold.

Incidentally, Eric P. Newman is 93, say half a generation older than John Ford.

Bob Leonard