The Riddell # 237 Contemporary Counterfeit 8R

My name is Bob Gurney. I am a retired Civil Engineer who began collecting coins about 50 years ago (1956). I was born in New England and I am a 14th generation Yankee, but I have retired to the warm and friendly south - the land of Andy Griffith. 

In my former area, the old families (mostly poor) were called Swamp Yankees.  My first paid job at age 10 was removing limbs from trees that my grandfather was cutting for firewood. That particular job was historically referred to as the "swamper".  When I started High School some of the kids and one of the teachers called me a Swamp Yankee or just Swamper because of where my family came from.  Some people consider Swamp Yankee to be an insult (as my wife keeps pointing out), but I have embraced it ever since I was a kid because I am proud of my roots.

My interest in coin collecting dates back to 1956 when I won a prize at my grade school. The prize was a quarter dollar - a well worn 1894 Barber coin that my teacher Mrs. Reed had gotten in change. She was not quite sure it was real money, but I asked her for it - because it was different. When I brought it home, I found that an interest in old and odd money may in fact be genetic. I had no sooner started asking my family about "old" coins when I found that there were many strange and odd coins - right at home. My grandfather had a collection, as did several aunt's and Uncles. Some were very small (accumulations) but others were  VERY large. I quickly got the idea that there must be something to this coin collecting thing.

Between 1957 and 1959, four things happened that changed my coin collecting interests forever.

1. We moved and I made two new friends - Eddie and Russ. Eddie lived near my new house and Russ was a fellow I met at my new school.
2. Eddie's grandfather had a few odd coins including an old Eight Reale from Mexico.
3. Russ's grandfather ran a chain of ice cream stands and I could hunt through his receipts for odd coins.
4. Finally, I got a collection of family papers from my Great Aunt Helen with family records, letters and receipts dating back to 1710. The most recent papers were from the Civil War era.

I was a very inquisitive kid with a love for history and I found that the receipts in the papers were stated in terms of Spanish Milled Dollars - NOT US dollars. This continued past the colonial era. In fact, it continued to happen with receipts dated up until the mid-1830s. So I started asking why and discovered that before 1857 my ancestors would have used Spanish American silver coins (mostly Mexican) - NOT US mint products. Coins like the 8 Reale that Eddie's grandfather had were more likely to have been used where I was raised than was any US coin. So I started to ask myself if my interest in early US coins was misplaced?  If I wanted to collect coins that my ancestors actually used - shouldn't I be focusing on Mexican silver coins?

Then while hunting through about $500 in nickels from the Ice Cream stands at Russ's grandfather's house - I found a 1944 no P nickel. It was one of the Henning forgeries and had a footnote in Red Book.  The fact that anyone would make a 5 cent coin got me interested in counterfeit money and the people that were involved.

Another Contemporary Counterfeit 8R

Very quickly, that combination of events led to my interest in Counterfeit Mexican coins. I met several older coin dealers who were friends of my Uncle Dolor. My Uncle Dolor was an avid coin collector from about 1915 onward. These coin dealers told me many stories about counterfeiters and counterfeiting. I next discovered the work of Dr. J. L. Riddell who worked as the Melter and Refiner at the New Orleans mint starting in 1839.   Riddell published his book "Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad" in 1845. That book showed me what the 8R counterfeits actually looked like that were known to be in circulation in the US before 1844. Then I discovered that many of these coins were still COMMON in New England. I also discovered that counterfeiting of Mexican coins was not always a Mexican activity. Many of the very common 8R counterfeits seen in Riddell's book were made in the US and circulated widely in the US during the Hard Times.  They are in fact US produced and used - a legitimate sub-set of US Numismatics.

I also discovered that some of my relatives may have been involved in that questionable undertaking.  One distant relative William (Big Bill) Gurney was a notorious forger in New York.

But anyway, that is how I got my eBay name and how I came to be involved with one of the most under appreciated areas of US numismatics - the study of Counterfeit Mexican 8Rs that circulated in the US alongside real 8 Reale coins before the Civil War.

In the nearly 50 years that I have been interested in counterfeits, I have focused almost exclusively on the 8 Reale series, but I did branch out into other areas so that I can learn more about historical and modern counterfeiting techniques. It is critical in my view to differentiate between the Contemporary Circulating Counterfeits (which are legal to possess under US Law) and the Modern junk forgeries and alterations (which are NOT legal and which should not be sold without the word COPY stamped into them).

I provide free opinions on the authenticity of 8Rs and of course I am always hunting for "legal" contemporary circulating counterfeit 8Rs.