The Fantastic 1804 Dollar

Newman, Eric P., and Kenneth E. Bressett. THE FANTASTIC 1804 DOLLAR. First printing. Racine: Whitman, 1962. 8vo, original brown textured cloth lettered in silver. 144 pages; illustrated. Signed by both authors on the title page. Fine. The scarce first printing of this classic work, copies of which are more accurately considered bound page proofs issued in very small numbers immediately before the presses were fired up to print the entire run, accompanied by a matching copy of the much more commonly encountered second printing. Both copies are signed by Newman and Bressett on the title page. The backstory behind this volume is the stuff of numismatic legend. Newman and Bressett's work had led them to the conclusion that the story of sets of 1834 and 1804 coins being issued for the Imam of Muscat and the King of Siam were myths-there was no evidence of such gifts having been issued. The book was due to be printed during the 1962 ANA convention, at which the discovery of the King of Siam set (including the 1804 dollar) was announced by David Spink and James Risk. This announcement elicited a frantic application of editorial brakes, as Newman and Bressett had to accommodate this new information and revise their publication to take it into account. What turned out to be an outstanding numismatic work could have been issued with a major flaw had it been prepared in time to be on sale at the ANA. See the extensive article by Len Augsburger and Joel Orosz in the Winter 2020 edition of The Asylum. A popular item, copies of the first printing have always been considered quite rare, though the presence of half a dozen or so of them in the Newman Library made them somewhat more available. Ex Cardinal Collection Library.