Bache Acquires Top Civil War Coin / Memorabilia Collection In Usa

CLEARWATER BEACH, Fla. - April 9, 2019 - PRLog -- The "Bache Collection", one of the largest private coin and memorabilia collections in the United States with over 300,000 pieces, has doubled the size of Civil War era items, adding a large number of New Orleans Mint coins, and outside of the Smithsonian Institution, Bache may hold some of the rarest coins and bars produced by the New Orleans Mint.

The "Rare Coin News" an online publication at http://www.rarecoinnews.com has a complete listing of United States Mint Reports.

Civil War and recommissioning, 1861–1879

Secession and Confederate seizure

The New Orleans Mint operated continuously from 1838 until January 26, 1861, when Louisiana seceded from the United States. On January 29, the Secession Convention reconvened at New Orleans (it had earlier met in Baton Rouge) and passed an ordinance that allowed Federal employees to remain in their posts, but as employees of the state of Louisiana. On February 5, 1861, during the proceedings of the Convention of the State of Louisiana in New Orleans, the committee appointed by the Convention to take an inventory on February 1, 1861, which reported that the Sub-Treasurer's vault at the mint contained $483,983 in gold and silver coins. The National Archives records in Rockville, Maryland, indicate the $483,983 consisted of $308,771 in gold coins and $175,212.08 in silver coins. The only gold coin produced in January, 1861 was the $20 gold double-eagle. This means 15,438 $20 gold coins were minted by the New Orleans Mint during January, 1861. Mint coinage records for the $20 1861-O gold double-eagle indicate only 5,000 $20 gold pieces were minted by the Federal Government in January, 1861. This discrepancy is unexplained.

In March 1861, Louisiana accepted the Confederate Constitution and retained all the mint officers. They used it briefly as their own coinage facility. The CSA struck 962,633 of the 2,532,633 New Orleans half-dollar coins dated 1861. Research suggests that 1861-O half dollars bearing a bisected date die crack ("WB-103") and 1861-O half-dollars with a "speared olive bud" anomaly ("WB-104") on the reverse had been minted under authority of the Confederacy. Confederate officials designed alternate reverse dies which they used to strike their own half-dollars. The exact number of the half-dollar coins struck by the CSA with the alternate reverse is unknown; but only five are known to exist today. One of them, which was sold at auction for a large sum, had once been owned by Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA, and one very likely a restrike, in The Bache Collection.

Confederate minting operations continued from April 1 until the bullion ran out later that month. The staff remained on duty until May 31, 1861.

Occupation by Union forces

For many Southern sympathizers, the Mint soon became a symbol of their hatred for the Union occupation. After U.S. Marines had raised the U.S. flag on the roof of the Mint in April 1862, a professional gambler named William Bruce Mumford ascended the roof and tore the flag down. He ripped the banner into shreds, and defiantly stuffed pieces of it into his shirt to wear as souvenirs. Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler, (a cousin of the original Bache family that founded Bache & Co.) the military governor of New Orleans (who was soon to be derisively nicknamed "Spoons" for allegedly seizing the silverware of New Orleans citizens arrested for treason against the United States), ordered Mumford executed in retaliation. Mumford was hanged on June 7, 1862. making national headlines. Jefferson Davis demanded that Butler immediately be executed if captured.

A piece of the U.S. flag, tore down from the Mint is in The Bache Collection, acquired by Butler after he was hung.

The mint reopened as an assay office in 1876. Its machinery damaged during the war, it was replaced in 1877  with new minting equipment. The building was refurbished and put back into active minting service in 1879, producing mainly silver coinage, including the famed Morgan silver dollar from 1879 to 1904.

A second chance, 1879–1909 - New Orleans coinage

An 1899-O Morgan dollar. Some of the most famous American coins, today they are the most widely available of the types produced in New Orleans.

The refurbishment and recommissioning of the New Orleans Mint was due partly to the fact that in 1878 the Federal government in Washington, D.C. had passed the Bland–Allison Act, which mandated the purchase and coining of a large quantity of silver yearly. The Treasury Department needed additional facilities to do so. It reopened the New Orleans facility primarily to coin large quantities of silver dollars, most of which were simply stored in the building instead of circulated. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed former Mississippi Senator and governor Henry S. Foote the new superintendent of the mint.

During this second period of operation, the Mint also struck dimes, quarters, half dollars, $5 half eagles, $10 eagles and, in 1879 only, 2,325 double eagles. It should also be noted that the New Orleans Mint was used by the Federal authorities in 1907 to coin over five and a half million silver twenty-centavo pieces for the Mexican government as part of the American government's program of producing foreign coinage. The New Orleans Mint, whose coins can be identified by the "O" mint mark found on the reverse of its coinage, earned a reputation for producing coins of a mediocre quality; their luster is usually not as brilliant as those of other mints, and center areas tend to be flattened and not sharply struck. Thus, well-struck New Orleanian coinage is prized in the numismatic world today.