The Mysterious

Robert S. Bashlow and his

Famous Restrikes

The mysterious New York City Coin Dealer Robert Bashlow was widely known as both a famous and infamous numismatist, coin dealer, entrepreneur and prankster. Famous for producing of several restrike coins of not only the confederacy, but also the Continental (Fugio) Dollar of 1776 and many other coins and tokens. Also he was reported to own several companies under such names as the Qwertyuio Press, the Williams Trading Company, and the Trans-Africa Development Company.

Little is written about Robert Bashlow the man other than he was eccentric, mysterious, secretive type of man  and after searching for hours I can find little about where he was born his childhood and early years and I have only found a bit of info on his death from Spanish newspapers, old numismatists and a numismatic author.

Robert Bashlow was born in 1939 and I presume he spent his early years in Brooklyn N.Y. but I can not verify this information.

He died age in 1979 at the hotel CORONA DE ARAGON during a fire caused by a terrorist attack by the radical group ETA in Saragossa, (Zaragoza) Spain.  According to one newspaper story he had escaped the building but returned to help another coin dealer he was there to meet.
 

Strangely Bashlow published not only numismatic books but also pornographic books, papers and music  under different pseudonyms such as Dick Harde along with famous numismatist and convicted child predator Walter Breen one of which was Lusty Limericks & Bawdy Ballads, published in 1956. Breen the famous numismatist, author and NAMBLA member  died in prison while serving a 10 year sentence for child molestation. Bashlow also produced anti Vietnam books one which was called 1001 ways to beat the draft and co authored by counterculture poet and writer Tuli Kupferberg.

He seems to have had a very high IQ, which was probably part of the attraction between him and Breen.  David Bowers wrote several pieces about Bashlow after he died in the hotel fire in Spain in 1979.   He was also known as quite the prankster, and these are a few stories as told by Bowers in his articles.
 

Bashlow bought a huge bathtub full of copper farthings after they were demonetized by Britain and sold piece by piece through the mail.  
 

He once made up a fake obituary for a Russian numismatist that had died recently, noting that for years he was the secret source of rarities, etc., for the Chapman brothers. He sent the obituary to Coin World, where it was published. There never was such a person.
 
He liked to use the pseudonym of T. Wellington Braithwaite, a "wealthy eastern investor," a fictional character he created who invested heavily in rare coins. Pretending to be T. Wellington Braithwaite, Bashlow would telephone Dealer A: "This is T. Wellington Braithwaite (faking a British accent). You probably don't remember me, but a few years ago I bought many rare coins from you. I took them to Dealer B and he said, ‘All of these coins are overgraded.  You've been taken.’ What does 'overgraded' mean?"  Thereupon Dealer A told T.W.B. what a super-jerk Dealer B was, and so on.
 
Bashlow bought the Confederate cent dies from Empire Coin Company (Q. David Bowers) in 1961.  He took the dies to August C. Frank, Co. in Philadelphia where they were cleaned and copied.  The copy dies were used to make the restrikes.  Irrespective of Bashlow's advertising, the original Confederate cent dies were not used to make restrikes, copy dies were used.
 
In a letter he wrote to Tom DeLorey, Bashlow explained why all but a very few restrikes were made double thick (.100 inch +/-).  He was afraid the Secret Service would get him for making coins with the likeness of U.S. coins.  I guess he failed U.S. history or had a revisionist history teacher.  In the letter, he described the alloys used and confirmed that two or three thin (.050 inch) strikes were made in silver and about a half dozen were made in bronze.  He never mentioned goldine.  He stated that 100 paperweights (ingots) were made and that he still had two of them.
 
Bashlow donated the original Confederate cent dies and all of the copy dies to the Smithsonian on April 12, 1962.  Also, he donated an array of restrikes and fancy pieces.  One item that was donated but not listed in the inventory was a gold restrike.  Only three were made and all are on thick planchets. 
 
 

An Email to me from an old time dealer on the West Coast regarding the availability to purchase some continental restrike dollars.

 All of the left over inventory of  Robert Bashlow, a New York City coin dealer was given to a his doctor as collateral for a loan, which was never repaid as Bashlow died in 1979, in a hotel fire in Spain. The Doctor had them for many years and one day he came to Seattle to get cancer treatment for his wife, and I wound up selling his collection of stuff, some of it wonderful, some horrible.

And then there was Bashlow's groupings including two very interesting Bashlow Confederate cent restrikes that nobody has seen for decades, one is a single-thickness goldine, 10 struck reported, the other is a silver proof, single thickness, the envelope which I saw in the Doctor's possession but was lost by the time I got the coin  from Pinches, London, where he had them struck, said "one of two".  Beautiful items, in my collection at the moment.

As  for the Continental Dollar Restrikes Bashlow reported NO white metal strikings, so the ones I acquired may be the  ones done by Bowers before he sold the dies to Bashlow. The dies came from Thomas Elder, and were re-cut from the Dickinson dies of 1876. So, not the same dies but related, sort of. The Confederate cent die was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution in 1962.

At one time, I had all of the remaining stock of Robert Bashlow, but over the years have sold most of it. I do have a couple of Continental Dollar goldine restrikes and at least one copper restrike, Also, he made 2000 silver, (small "s" next to a lower left ring on the reverse) and I do have one of those, in a holder, and also somewhere have original sales envelopes  for the silver pieces.  There is a possibility that I can come up with one of each type for you Silver, Copper, Goldine, and White Metal  Every time I think I am out of them, I seem to find a few more.

Sorry I had to remove photos of Bashlow's Coins, to see them just do a Google image search for Bashlow restrikes and you should find lots of photos and information.

Dick Johnson a famous numismatist and founder of Coin World wrote the following regarding Mr. Bashlow,

"I was involved with the Bashlow Confederate restrikes at the beginning and at the end of his project.  I remember it well, as well as Robert Bashlow personally. (I had visited him at his New York City apartment and at his one-room storage vault deep within a Manhattan storage company - where the floor was literally covered with bags of foreign
coins - you had to walk on top of the bags - he was actively dealing in foreign coins at the time).

"I had just started Coin World in 1960 when Bashlow first had the August Frank company make copy dies from the original dies he acquired. He advertised these in early Coin World issues and we publicized these rather widely. For a special Civil War issue of Coin World I believe we ran a special feature article on his project.

"At the end of this is when Medallic Art Company purchased the August Frank company assets, including the dies, in November 1972. I was charged with cataloging these. We hired an August Frank employee, William Neithercott, to assist in this cataloging. He remembered
Bashlow, and he was still proud of what the firm had done in sinking new copy dies and striking these replicas for Bashlow a dozen years earlier.

"Unfortunately, there were no Bashlow dies amongst the 7,000 dies acquired from August Frank in 1972. He must have retrieved every one of them.

"As for the gold restrikes, I have no memory of these.  My only suggestion is to search the early issues of Coin World; they may have been mentioned in one of the Bashlow articles or advertisements.

"Shortly after this Bashlow crossed Coin World publisher John Amos, who prohibited his further advertising. I don't remember what caused this but he became persona non grata in the pages of Coin World afterwards. (This was long before the same thing happened to Walter Breen, who had also been embargoed from Coin World pages, under the editorship of Margo Russell.)

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS OR CORRECTIONS EMAIL TO STUMPY777@MCHSI.COM

PHOTOS OF BASHLOW COINS IN ORIGINAL SALE HOLDERS COURTESY JANKOVSKY COLLECTION

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