Bill Jones' Coronet Quarter Eagles
1848 CAL

Owner Comments:

Gold was discovered in California in January of 1848. A few months later, probably 80% of the adult male population was engaged in finding gold. Colonel Richard B. Mason, who was the military governor of California, led an exposition of soldiers (including future Civil War Union General, William T. Sherman) to the California goldfields, which were east of San Francisco, in July 1848. There he gathered 13 samples of gold from the various sites. To that he added an “oyster can” full of gold that had been taken in by the San Francisco Customs House. In August sent one of his lieutenants to Washington with a tea caddy full of gold that weighed about 231 ounces. Upon the arrival of gold in Washington, Secretary of War, William Marcy, forwarded the gold, less one pound, to the Philadelphia mint. His instructions were to use the gold to make one or two small gold bars, two medals for Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, and some quarter eagles with a distinguishing mark. The two gold medals were later made from another gold deposit, but this first California gold deposit to the Philadelphia mint was used to make the gold bars and an estimated 1,389, 1848 CAL. quarter eagles. A letter from Mint Director Patterson confirmed that the California gold was used to make the quarter eagles and that those coins were marked with the CAL. counterstamp on the revere. As such these coins commemorated the first shipment of California gold to a United States mint, and they were made from gold included in that shipment. No other U.S. commemorative coin can be as closely associated with the event that it marks.