by Dennis Tucker

In the summer of 2014 at Whitman Publishing we started planning a new book by Q. David Bowers. I remember talking with our editorial team about the project. Its foundation would be several decades’ worth of Bowers’s research on American coin treasures and hoards. His information-gathering had started in the 1950s when he was a young man just beginning what would become a lifelong career as a numismatist and historian. Over the years and decades, Dave would write about coin hoards and treasures in numerous columns, articles, auction catalogs, books, and elsewhere. His first book devoted entirely to the subject was published in 1997. These 50-plus years of research would form the basis of a new, bigger, updated volume that we planned to publish in 2015.

Lost and Found Coin Hoards and Treasures included some two dozen significant updates to earlier published essays, with new research and sales information, plus recent discoveries from the past ten to fifteen years and, notably, a dramatic update to the story of the sunken SS Central America. The latter was and is one of Dave’s greatest numismatic obsessions. For many years, since I became publisher at Whitman in 2004, I’d heard him extol the genius and hard work required to find the amazing shipwreck and bring its gold and silver to the surface. “No larger gold Rush-era treasure was ever lost,” he would say, “so by definition no greater American treasure can ever be found!” I was delighted that he would be able to update the story with exciting news of the ship’s latest (2014) exploration and additional recoveries from the wreck site.

In his manuscript, Dave shared his ongoing research and added many modern-day discoveries, showing that treasure isn’t just in children’s tales and pirate stories. The SS North Carolina, lost in July 1840 off the coast of South Carolina with a treasure of silver and gold coins, was found in the year 2000. The SS Republic, shipwrecked in a hurricane in October 1865 off the Georgia coast, was found in 2003 with its load of silver and gold coins. The side-wheel steamship SSNew York, swamped in 1846 in a “perfect gale” off the coast of Texas, was located in 2005. Back on dry land, Dave shared Ron Gillio’s personal recollection of the Wells Fargo Hoard of nearly20,000 (!) 1908 No Motto double eagles. In 2013 the Saddle Ridge Hoard of gold coins wasdiscovered—almost $28,000 in face value alone—buried in eight metal cans in California around1894, and appraised at $10 million. In 2015 the Stack’s West 57th Street Hoard came to light: more than a million coins, weighing some 60,000 pounds and including sacks of tens of thousands of large cents, bag quantities of Barber silver coins, ten thousand 1909 V.D.B cents, and many others. That same year the Massachusetts State House time capsule was exhumed, after being hidden in 1795 with a cache of coins and opened and resealed in 1855 with the addition of more coins.

After describing hundreds of discovered hoards and treasures, and illustrating that such finds are still happening today, Dave offered two more tantalizing chapters, “Undiscovered Treasures onLand” and “Unrecovered Sunken Treasures.” Hundreds of tidbits, clues, and rumors, laid out state by state, offer more possibilities to set a treasure-hunter’s heart and mind racing.

Creating a Book About Coins and People

By the time we started work on Lost and Found Coin Hoards and Treasures in 2014,1 had overseen the publication of nearly 30 books by Dave Bowers. That averaged to about three books per year, not counting his editorship of the Guide Book of United States Coins, putting him firmly in the ranks of the most prolific American historians. Many of these books were updated in multiple editions over the years—a good measure of their popularity.

Dave’s process for building the Lost and Found manuscript was in classic Bowers style: drawing on a lifetime of carefully gathered and organized research; seeking insight and information from experts and specialists; striving always for numismatic accuracy and detail; and telling good stories and telling them well. Add to that approach a near-photographic memory and the wits and knowledge to make a hundred mental connections where most people would make one or two. And fold in Dave’s ability to see American and world history in both a big-picture view and in

homey, local, very personal context. This was the recipe that created his wonderfully unique exploration of a fascinating subject.

Lost and Found Coin Hoards and Treasures is a book about coins, but on a deeper level it’s a book about people. Some of the personalities Dave introduced were quirky, like coin hoarderAlexander Miller, who lived in a tiny town in Vermont, rarely spoke with the outside world, and also collected airplane parts and vintage cars. Some were courageous, like Captain WilliamLewis Herndon, who went down with the hurricane-stricken Central America after evacuating the ship’s women and children.

Perhaps most appealingly, Lost and Found is about the people who find the hidden hoards and treasures, whether they’re farmers digging in the earth, adventurous boys exploring a basement,metal-detectorists sweeping a potato field, or scientists calculating the precise location of a sunken shipwreck. The gold and silver are out there waiting to be found, by accident or by design. The finders could be any of us if we’re lucky or smart, or both. That’s the excitement that Dave taps into and fuels with his storytelling.

“A Treasure Trove of Colorful and Fun Facts”

The “Sage of Wolfeboro” wrapped up nearly all his text manuscripts and gathered its accompanying images by the end of 2014. All that remained to be finished was the updated section on the SS Central America, which was still being reviewed and fine-tuned by various experts. (As I told our editorial staff at the time, “The Central America is an active shipwreck site, so there are teams of people involved,” and it took time to ensure the story was told correctly.) Bob Evans, chief scientist and historian of the recovery of the Central America, wrote a foreword for the new book, as did Kenneth Bressett, longtime editor of the Guide Book of united States Coins.

More than 600 photographs, engravings, drawings, maps, coin images, and other illustrations made the new book visually as colorful as its narrative. (A review in the journal of the American numismatic Society would describe the images as “eye candy.”)

The book debuted in October 2015 and was an immediate success. Numismatist Mike Thome, in Coins Magazine, May 2016, “merely scratched the surface” (his words) in his full-page review of the book, calling it “a magnificent effort” and stating that “this volume belongs in the library of any coin collector who likes to dream about finding a great hoard.” California Bookwatch’s “Antiques/Collectibles Shelf’ called it “a treasure trove of colorful and fun facts … accessible to coin collectors and adventure readers alike.” Midwest Book Review, which makes recommendations to libraries and others, called it “an absolutely fascinating and profusely illustrated read from beginning to end,” “impressively well researched, written, organized, and presented,” and “very highly recommended for personal, community, and academic library collections.”

By 2018, after a good print run, the first edition was sold out of our inventory and we started to plan a second edition—the book now available—for publication in 2019.

The latest edition has more than 50 new photographs and numerous updates to its essays. Ongoing research and consultation with specialists have led to some significant revisions and additions. From Forgotten Colorado Silver: Joseph Lesher ’s Defiant Coins (2017) came Robert D. Leonard Jr.’s and Kenneth Hallenbeck’s discussion of a rumored hoard of Lesher ReferendumDollars. John M. Kleeberg recommended the removal of Missouri’s Wilson Tilley treasure from the chapter on “Hoaxes, Fantasies, and Questioned Finds,” pointing to evidence of its very real existence. Other essays were updated with recent findings. In the meantime, research is ongoing, and newly discovered hoards and treasures—such as that of the steam-packet Pulaski, lost in a maritime disaster in 1838 and brought to light in 2018 and 2019—will undoubtedly be added to future editions.

After all, the coins are out there. They just need to be found and reported … and then they make history.

by Dennis Tucker

Beth Deisher’s groundbreaking Cash In Your Coins was first published in June 2013. Before that, occasional articles and columns and a few books gave guidance to inheritors finding themselves in possession of a rare-coin collection. David L. Ganz and Q. David Bowers (each a past president of the American Numismatic Association) have written on the subject. The 90-page Rare Coin Estate Handbook (Halperin, Ivy, and Rohan, 2000) focused on estate-planning for active collectors. In 2010 professional numismatist Jeff Ambio wrote What to Do With Granddaddy’s Coins.

Then in 2012 Beth Deisher retired as Coin World’s editor. She left that post with decades of real-world experience answering questions asked not only by collectors, but also by the spouses and children who inherited their coin collections. Beth brought the perfect mix of talent and expert knowledge to a new full-length book idea. “The premise is if you don’t know what you have, and you don’t know its value, then you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to selling,” she said. “My book’s purpose is to help readers approach selling with confidence.”

We envisioned a volume of several hundred pages, with explanations of the difference between wholesale and retail, how to use price guides, and how to create different types of inventories; full-color illustrations of every U.S. coin to help non-collectors identify their property; and information about tax laws and their consequences. It would be written not from a dealer’s perspective or from a collector’s perspective, but for people who inherit coins and know virtually nothing about them.

At the June/July 2013 Summer Seminar of the American Numismatic Association, at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, I co-taught a course with Beth, Kenneth Bressett, and Robert Hoge on writing, research, editing, and publishing. During the seminar I spoke with many dealers and collectors, and it was gratifying to hear, over and over, “I’m so glad Beth wrote Cash In Your Coins.” Her book was fresh off the presses, and it was already a topic of vibrant conversation.

Discussing the book that summer with Wayne Homren, editor of The E-Sylum (the online journal of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society), I remarked:

The first edition of Cash In Your Coins was praised in reviews in print and online, and it won awards including “Best Specialized Book, Numismatic Investments” from the Numismatic Literary Guild. It quickly sold out its substantial first print run. In September 2014 we published an expanded second edition, with new case studies and illustrations, a new chapter on taxes, and other updates. Both editions went through multiple printings.

Cash In Your Coins clearly fills a need within the hobby community. Given the popularity of the first two editions and, now in 2019, publication of the third, I’m pleased that the book has taken its place among Whitman Publishing’s list of “evergreen” titles. And I’m thankful that Beth Deisher, who in recent years has spearheaded the national conversation around anti-counterfeiting education, continues to be a leader in our field, looking out for average collectors and their families.