Formerly offered as lot 1645 in Bowers’ Lexington Collection. J. Rosenthal’s business opened in Prescott, Arizona in August 20, 1875, a fact that was announced in a notice published in the contemporary Arizona newspaper The Weekly Miner. The silver in the Prescott region was extracted from the Wallapai Mountains which was an active mining area from the early 1870s to mid 1880s.
12.22 oz (1879-1883) J. Rosenthal mixed metal Assayer’s Ingot. No. 481. $15.60.
988 Fine. Gold 12.09. 71mm x 35mm x 12mm. Rectangular in overall shape with a trapezoidal appearance when viewed from the side. The top of the ingot has the above information in five lines. The bottom has a pair of assayer’s stamps that read: J. ROSENTHAL ASSAYER / PRESCOTT A.T. with mold depressions in between the stamps. Numerous handling marks and a couple of scratches are present on each side, and there is a roughened area below the Z in Oz.
The top of the ingot has each line impressed by individual punches, using no gang punches or stamps of any sort. As a result, the characters are uneven and there are two obvious mispunchings on the last line: the word GOLD was stamped in as GOID with the D first punched in upside down, then corrected. Actually, the third character does not appear to be an I as it lacks the bottom serifs. Rather, it seems to be a broken letter T. On that same line the 0 and 9 overlap.
Ford believes that the piece offered here was probably produced circa 1879 to 1883. The presently offered piece first came to light in 1954, when it was offered for sale at a coin show in Long Beach, California.
Jack Klausen believed this piece to be unique, and we know of no other piece from this Territorial Assayer.
Ex: Lexington Collection (Bowers and Merena, 1/94), lot 1645. From The Estate of Jack L. Klausen.
[09/2002] https://coins.ha.com/itm/territorial-gold/-1879-1883-j-rosenthal-electrum-mixed-gold-and-silver-/a/300-9039.s ($8,050)