22 Years Yoachum Silver Dollar Research

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by James F. Morris, Apr 1, 2008.

  1. Tom Maringer

    Tom Maringer Senior Member

    I agree with Captain Henway 100%. The coins and dies that you are showing are without question modern fantasies.

    As a metal craftsman and coinmaker I have extensive experience with coinmaking and die sinking, steel heat-treating and alloys. I even do a version of the Yocum Dollar myself, in one full troy ounce of .999 silver. The fact that your coins are revealed to be composed of a precisely controlled sterling silver alloy is absolutely diagnostic and irrefutable.

    As a professional geologist I have extensive knowledge and experience with the occurrences of metal ores, their chemistry, characteristics, extraction, processing, smelting, refinement, and processing. Furthermore I have studied the mineral districts of the Ozarks.

    Mr Morris cites W. C. Jameson’s book, “Buried Treasures of the Ozarks” as support for his contention that there are silver mines in the Ozarks. This is a popular book of folklore, not serious historical research. Jameson will write down anything anyone says without bothering to check any facts. That book cannot be used as a reference source. If Mr. Morris had bothered to look through the extensive of REAL geological literature available on the minerals district of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas (such as that available at the library of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville) he would have found that THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY SIGNIFICANT SILVER PRODUCTION ANYWHERE IN THE OZARKS. Period… None… EVER!

    There is no silver or gold in the Ozarks, though it is true that there are many legends and tales of lost silver and gold mines here. It has been something of a hobby of mine to chase these things down. I have spent many hours on porch chairs talking with old-timers who regale me with tales of gold down on the Middle Fork… or the lost silver mine somewhere up Hurricane Creek. I have even talked with some who claimed to have actually seen some of these legndary coins... or who even claim to own one... but just can't seem to find it right now.

    The gold legends are the easiest to dispel… they are all related to iron pyrite (fools gold, FeS) occurrences in the Fayetteville shale. Gold never occurs in shales… but pyrite often does. Please believe me when I say that if there were any actual chance of finding gold here, I would be out there filing claims and securing mineral rights. I just found some very pretty sparkly gold colored pyrite in the Fayetteville Shale yesterday as a matter of fact. Very nice looking... but NOT GOLD. The only REAL mineral wealth associated with the Fayetteville shale is natural gas, which occurs in pockets here and there across the area. Exploration drill rigs are fanning out across the area as we speak.

    The silver legends are more widespread and interesting. Again, there is no silver here, but we DO have a significant lead-zinc mining district. Several ore minerals occur, but most significantly there are the sulphides sphalerite (ZnS) and Galena (PbS). Now of course lead has been known since antiquity, and galena can be smelted easily to metallic lead in an ordinary campfire. This is how explorers and settlers made their bullets.

    Zinc is a little trickier to smelt, but it can still be done using very simple equipment on a medium-small fire without any fancy forced air blowers or bellows. But zinc was not recognized as a separate element until the late 1700s. So by the early 1800s it was still not widely known, certainly not in wild frontier areas of the New World. There is some documentary evidence suggesting that zinc was commonly referred to in this area as “Ozark Silver”. People recognized that it was different than lead… with a more silvery luster. They also recognized that it was not as heavy and melted at a lower temperature… but it’s important to realize that not many people in those days understood the chemistry theory underlying what we now know as the Periodic Table of the Elements. In those days most people thought that this was just another “kind” of silver. So even though there may have been knowledgable people around... the use of the term "silver" became vague because of this alternate usage.

    We also know from extensive documentation that counterfeiting of coin was rampant and that different types of counterfeiting went on in different regions. In this region the dominant method was the making of fake silver coins in “base metals”. This essentially means zinc and lead. Now we all know that lead alone is a lousy counterfeiting metal because of its softness… but when alloyed with zinc for weight… and with just 5% or so of silver to give it a “ring”… you can create an alloy that will pass off reasonably well to folks who don’t look very close. In the days before US coin was widely available the dominant circulating currency was the Mexican silver 8-reale. Since it was technically not illegal to counterfeit foreign coins, these were the target of many counterfeiting schemes.

    There are at least four separate local coin legends known to me, of which the Yocum Dollar legend is one. The others are the Sprinkle Dollar, based in Kentucky and widely documented, the Bear Hollow Dollar in Madison County Arkansas, and the Silver Hollow Dollar in Newton County Arkansas. Now one really curious fact about all these stories is that they all share a certain phraseology… that the coins in question have “more silver than a government dollar”. This fact would lead those who study the development of myths and legends to conclude that they are in fact genetically related, since they share a fragment of storyline DNA (as it were).

    The REAL story, if you want my take on it, involves some shady characters. I think that there were some real counterfeiting schemes being run in the Ozarks by backwoods yahoos that knew enough to smelt a little ore and knock off some crude copies of Mexican 8-reale pieces. To keep other locals off their backs they circulated the story that they had their own silver mines and that their coins had even more silver in them than the government issue coins. Nobody could ever find those mines and with the increase in geological expertise the tales were shifted to Spanish silver. Nobody ever seems to question the fact that the Ozarks are very far from any conceivable path that the Spaniards might have taken from their mines in Mexico to get to the Gulf… but once a tale gets going the gullible will swallow anything. Such tales tend to grow with the telling, and eventually in the 1980s somebody decided to create a crude coin to match the tale of the Yocum Dollar and try to cash in. If they had actually smelted their own silver from ore in a cupola, or bought some old Spanish silver to make them from they could have got past the alloy chemistry test… but they didn’t bother. It was all likely just a big joke that got out of hand.

    Interesting yes… but authentic? No way!
     
    CaptHenway and JPeace$ like this.
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  3. James F. Morris

    James F. Morris New Member

    YSD Reply



    Mr. DeLorey,

    Please review my post of 4/27/08 - Coin Chat - Please Respond /appreciate your help.

    James
     
  4. CaptHenway

    CaptHenway Survivor

    Can't we keep all relevent comments in the same thread?
     
  5. Lynita L. Adams

    Lynita L. Adams New Member

    I'm curious to know if any, of the coins that have been looked at, have " copy " stamped at the bottom.
     
  6. chrisild

    chrisild Coin Collector

    Welcome to Coin Talk! Please note that the topic you replied to is more than seven years old. ;) However, according to what James F. Morris wrote, "Each coin has been hand stamped “copy” to comply with U. S. Federal Trade Commission requirements" (see the file attached to post #7 here).

    Christian
     
  7. Jwt708

    Jwt708 Well-Known Member

    All the same, an interesting post I never read before
     
  8. The_Cave_Troll

    The_Cave_Troll The Coin Troll

    i have had 2 different clients in the past month send pictures of these "coins" to me to try to sell. The legend seems to be growing...
     
  9. green18

    green18 Unknown member Sweet on Commemorative Coins Supporter

    Dang Cave Troll, you've been gone too long.........:)
     
  10. Mark Chamberlain

    Mark Chamberlain New Member

    I have information on your coin. Please contact me via PM
    Thank you.
     
  11. Mark Chamberlain

    Mark Chamberlain New Member

    Hi James. J.R. Blunk and I would love for you to please contact us. J.R.'s number is still the same...still out at the farm. You can also contact me here now. I know you and I have never met, but J.R. speaks highly of you and he's very excited that I found you on this site. Thank you.
     
  12. SuperDave

    SuperDave Free the Cartwheels!

    I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but neither member you've called out has been seen since their last post - 7 years in Mr. Morris' case.
     
  13. Mark Chamberlain

    Mark Chamberlain New Member

    Thank you. I knew it may be a long shot, but I had to try.
     
  14. Richard Comings

    Richard Comings New Member

     
  15. SuperDave

    SuperDave Free the Cartwheels!

    Contact the Forum Admins. It's likely they will have an email address of record for that member, and may be convinced to forward a message for you. It certainly seems that you'd have no objection to your contact info being provided to Mr. Morris.
     
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