It can be reasonably concluded that certain patterns and the ingot below were produced by Frederick Meyer & Company, a scale and weight manufacturing firm founded in the 1830’s by Frederick Ferdinand Meyer.
Meyer (or Meyers) immigrated from Germany in 1832 and by 1838 had started manufacturing scales and weights in Philadelphia, PA. He employed brothers John and Henry Troemner, who would eventually go on to product balances and weights for the U.S. Mint.
America’s Golden Age: Private and Pioneer Gold Coins of the United States 1786-1862, by David McCarthy
Through careful study and research, the pieces of the puzzle have been put back together and the enigmatic $18 ingot that follows would make a lot more sense in historical context. Meyer’s likely presence in California in early 1850 neatly coincides with debates in California surrounding the value of placer gold and when a fixed price of $18/oz was being considered. The valuation was a local phenomenon that was long forgotten in the anals of history until around 2008 when a letter was discovered from Moffat & Co to Beebee, Ludlow & Company who was the largest bullion broker in the country. In that letter Moffatt specifically referenced paying for gold dust at $18/oz valuation. Furthermore, several newspaper stories emerged from the same time showing that merchants in San Francisco intended to fix the price of gold at $17 or $18/oz. As such, it is believed that the Meyer’s & Co ingot is a product of direct needs at the time and local to San Francisco, CA.
1 oz Meyers & Co. San Francisco, CA. Gold $18 assay ingot, c1850
Overall appearance of Extremely Fine. Nice, bright yellow gold color. Top and bottom corners on left trimmed when made creating a rectangular ingot with six sides. Minor roughness, particularly on the back. Edge test cut. Unique.
According to author and renowned numismatist David McCarthy in his book:
“Unlike the Moffatt $16 ingots, which had stamped fineness, the Meyers ingot lists its weight and value, and is stamped ‘U.S. STANDARD WARRANTED’ in an apparent reference to the U.S. standard for weight, rather than its purity… independent XRF tests conducted by PCGS have confirmed that it is .934-fine gold alloyed primarily with silver. This composition is consistent with that of unrefined California gold and is within the reported range of gold assayed at the Philadelphia mint in 1850.”
America’s Golden Age: Private and Pioneer Gold Coins of the United States 1786-1862, by David McCarthy
Mr. Ford dated the Meyers & Co. bar to 1849, based on its resemblance to the Moffat bars and to the fact that gold in small bar form was popular only in 1849, being supplanted by coin thereafter. Moffat & Company’s small rectangular gold bars of 1849 were stamped with their fineness in carats and their dollar value but not their weight.
Presumably, in commerce such a bar was weighed and its gold content by weight figured by multiplying the bar’s decimal fineness by its weight to discover the pure gold content and then multiplying that sum by $20.6718, the standard Mint price for a Troy ounce of pure gold from 1834-1933. Taking one Moffat $16 bar as an example (Garrett:927), that piece weighs 436.5 grains (just one grain shy of a full ounce avoirdupois) and has a stated carat of 20.75. If we divide 20.75 carats by 24 we find the bar is stated to be .8645833 fine gold and if we multiply that decimal fineness by 436.5 grains we find the bar is said to contain 377.39061 grains of pure gold and that product multiplied by 0.0430662 cents (the value of a grain of pure gold at the Mint price of $20.6718 per Troy ounce of 480 grains) yields a value for the Moffat bar in question of $16.25.
When the present Meyers & Co. bar was sold in the 1982 Clifford Collection auction the cataloguer at the time worried about what he saw as a problematic difference in the $18 stated gold value of the bar and a $16 per ounce price of gold in San Francisco in 1849 and concluded that the Meyers & Co. bar was “enigmatic”. It seems to the present writer that there really isn’t a problematic difference here at all, however. The Moffat bar does not state its weight but as the math detailed above shows, assumes the customer could verify the bar’s stated $16 value pretty easily if he wanted to. The only datum Moffat did not provide his customer was the bar’s weight, which was subject to change by clipping, wear, etc. anyway Always assumed was the standard mint value of a Troy ounce of 480 grains of pure gold and at that standard Moffat’s $16 bar was undervalued by about 1.5%.
Back in Philadelphia a few years later Eckfeldt and Dubois also remarked on how Moffat’s bars were slightly undervalued. The Meyers & Co. $18 bar states its weight as 1 Troy ounce and at 480.0 grains it is right on the money. It also gives its value as $18 but does not state its fineness. With the weight and value of the bar known, one of Meyers & Co.’s customers only had verify the bar’s weight and then divide the bar’s value of $18 by the value of a Troy ounce of pure gold $20.6718 to get the bar’s implied fineness, .87075. There’s more math to do to verify Moffat’s bar’s value of $16 than there is to establish the Meyer’s bar’s fineness. However, its fineness was still subject to verification, which would cost the customer an assayer’s charge and the loss of some metal in the process. Moffat’s reputation and references established the credibility of his assays right from the start and anyone could weigh a bar for free.
While it may look like verifying a Moffat bar was a more complicated process, verifying a Meyers & Co. bar turns out to be even more so, and costlier, too. On its face, there appears to be nothing problematical about this Meyers & Co. bar’s weight or dollar value, despite the Clifford cataloguer’s misgivings. That said, in the absence of any sure information about who this Meyers & Co. was and given the fact that this is the only such bar known, this object must remain a matter for further study.
- Face: MEYERS & Co. in a rectangular logotype punch with a background of horizontal lines / 1 [single numeral punch] OZ. TROY [in raised lines from the base of the mold] / a rectangular punch of the same length as the first on this side, also with a background of horizontal lines, comprising a $ followed by space for a value on which has been punched in individual numerals 18.00.
- Back: U.S. STANDARD above WARRANTED, all apparently by individual letter punches.
- Top side: blank.
- Bottom side: blank.
- Left side: blank.
- Right side: blank.
- Dimensions: 31.8 x 15.6 x 3.5 mm.
- Current weight: 31.14 gms.
From the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection
Provenance: Mr. Ford’s informational card that accompanies the lot records the bar’s provenance as “Aluminum foil impressions given to me by P.[aul] F.[ranklin], 4/20/56. Ingot ordered at [price in code]. Ingot obtained and sold to me by P.F. on April 28, ’56 at the Central States Con.[vention] in Indianapolis. “After figuring his cost and what he paid Franklin through a series of tight deals, Mr. Ford continues “$18 Meyers discovered by John Kenworthy of Phoenix, Arizona. Alum. foil impressions to Stack’s, 6/19/58. Sold by me, 4/6/59 to John Murrell, Dallas, Texas, via John Rowe.” As we know, from Murrell the bar went to Henry Clifford in whose sale it later appeared (Bowers & Ruddy, March 18, 1982, lot 73) and from where Mr. Ford bought it for $21,000.
[10/2007] https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/lots/view/3-AV6NL/meyers-co-san-francisco-california-gold-18-assay-ingot ($86,250)
Meyers & Co. $18 Gold Ingot.
Possibly circa 1849 and contemporaneous with the ingots of Moffat & Co. which are of similar format.
The ingot is rectangular in shape, with rounded or trimmed corners, and is in Extremely Fine condition. A test cut was made on the edge (not visible from front or back) at some later date.
The obverse of the piece has the inscription MEYERS & CO. at the top, impressed in the die from a prepared punch with the background being shaded by closely-spaced vertical lines, much in the manner of the Moffat issue. At the center is the inscription in relief, OZ. TROY, also from the die. The numeral I has been punched in by hand at left, indicating that the original punch was blank in this regard and that varying weights could be placed on the ingot, depending on the ingot in question. Below, also from the same punch, is a vertically ribbed rectangle with a $ figure as part of the punch to the left. The numerals 18.00 have also been punched in by hand.
The reverse consists of the following inscription in two lines, apparently individually impressed with letter punches: U.S. STANDARD/WARRANTED.
The piece is enigmatic in that the value of one ounce is clearly stated to be $18, two dollars above the generally prevailing rate in San Francisco at the time. This piece, which weighs 480.0 grains, is approximately consistent in stamped value with the circa 1849 Moffat & Co. undated $16 gold ingot which weighs 436.5 grains and which has a stamped value of $16.00, as offered as Lot 927 in our sale of the Garrett Collection. The fineness of the present bar, an important consideration, is not stated. By contrast, various Moffat bars had the fineness expressed in carats. Examples of varying finenesses are illustrated on page 294 of the Kagin book.
Unique; the only specimen known to exist, not only of this denomination but of any Meyers & Co. ingot. The similarity of the issue to the Moffat & Co. ingots makes the piece particularly important and significant. Called unique by Kagin and Taxay PG-88. One of the highlights of the Clifford Collection.
[03/1982] https://archive.org/details/henryhcliffordco1982bowe/page/n57/