Q. David Bowers
In correspondence years later with dealer Abner Kreisberg, L.W. Hoffecker told of his involvement with the design and authorization of the Old Spanish Trail half dollars: (Letter to Abner Kreisberg, Nmnismatic Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, May 2, 1953. From the Hoffecker files in the Bowers and Merena Galleries Reference Collection. Abner Kreisberg, a partner with Abe Kosoff in the Nwnismatic Gallery from the early 19405 until 1953, later conducted his own business (including a partnership with Jerry Cohen) in Beverly Hills.) "I was the originator of getting out these coins to raise money for the museum." I drew the design for the coin myself, and with the help of a man I picked up on relief [Senn] we made the plaster cast in my office. I took the design to the Committee of Fine Arts who passed it without any changes whatever, which is unusual. I then went to Washington and got the bill by the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures in both houses of Congress, notwithstanding Mr. [L.W.] Robert, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, said I could not have the coin. The chairman of the Coinage Committee was against it. Mr. Morgenthau did not approve of the design, but brought the chief en-graver of the Mint who did approve of it, but Mr. Morgenthau still said I could not have my initials on the coins, but they are there. I paid for the coins out of my own pocket and received them all. The Museum only got two coins which I personally presented to them. I distributed the entire issue and have a letter from the Department of the Mint saying there were no complaints about my manner or handling them .... "
Cornelius Vermeule in his Numismatic Art in America study put the design of this coin in a special class by itself: "The half dollar of 1935 known as the Old Spanish Trail can safely be designated the ugliest commemorative coin ever produced by a United States mint. It may be the strongest contestant for the title of least attractive American coin ever manufactured under official auspices between 1793 and the present. (A potential rival might be the three-dollar gold piece of the middle nineteenth century or the silver three-cent piece, but the latter has the redeeming feature of delicate workmanship and the former is touched by quaintness, like a ship's figurehead or a cigar-store Indian.) The designer of the Old Spanish Trail half dollar was one L.W. Hoffecker, the numismatist who conceived and promoted the issue. The workmanship, the composition that is, certainly smacks of such amateurishness."
Production and Distribution
In September 1935 10,008 pieces were struck, and all but the extra eight assay coins were subsequently sent to E1 Paso. (Of the 10,000 pieces shipped to Hoffecker, just three coins were found to be defective, a testimonial to the excellence of the Mint's quality control at the time (per a letter from Hoffecker to Walter P. Nichols, August 13, 1936). The cost of shipping and insuring the coins from the Mint to EI Paso was $177 paid in advance (per a letter from Hoffecker to Trygve Rovelstad, October 12, 1935).) Hoffecker offered these at $2 each, a price which was double that charged for the controversial Hudson coins which were "sold out" a few months earlier and double the price charged in 1935 for Arkansas half dollars.? While the Arkansas entrepreneurs were satisfied with selling their coins for 100% more than face value, Hoffecker wanted 300%. However, this high price brought forth no complaints of profiteering, or at least complaints were kept out of the pages of The Numismatist. On the other hand, it should be remembered that the 1928 Hawaiian coins had been a sellout at the original $2 issue price.
It is believed that Hoffecker distributed the majority of the Old Spanish Trail coins at $2 each to interested persons, primarily collectors. There is no evidence that large quantities were reserved for speculators, although many coins were retained by Hoffecker himself, despite his public statements to the contrary.
The outstanding financial and public relations success scored by the distribution of the Old Spanish Trail half dollars inspired Hoffecker to become involved further, and the next year saw him working in El Paso in an arrangement whereby he was the official outlet for half dollars made to commemorate an event in distant Elgin, Illinois.
Hoffecker Testifies to Congress
In testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, March 11, 1936, L.W. Hoffecker, acting in the capacity of chairman of the Legislative Committee of the American Numismatic Association, discussed his involvement with the Old Spanish Trail half dollar.
Mr. Hoffecker: "I will say that I have been out to the San Diego Exposition and talked to those people and got an idea of how many they have sold. I am quite familiar also with the Maryland issue, and also with the Connecticut issue, and with the Old Spanish Trail issue that I was the distributor of myself.
Senator Alva B. Adams: "When you say you were 'the distributor,' how did you become the distributor?"
Mr. Hoffecker: "I was asked by our people to come up here and sponsor the bill, being the only coin collector in that district (This is a lie. In his correspondence Hoffecker referred numerous times to other collectors in El Paso, a number of whom were said to have purchased one or two coins each. Hoffecker's statements of this period are laced with inconsistences, misleading information, and untruths.) and I came up and sponsored the bill, and it was passed, and I distributed the coins on their orders."
Senator Adams: "But you had no ownership of them?"
Mr. Hoffecker: "No, sir; none whatever. (This is a patent lie. Compare this to Hoffecker's statement, quoted earlier (in a letter to Abner Kreisberg): "I paid for the coins out of my own pocket and received them all. The Museum only got two coins which I personally presented to them.") We got 10,000 coins in our issue. I talked with all the big collectors and the dealers discouraged me, and told me that on account of the depression and so many other bills being up that I wouldn't be able to sell those coins. They had me worried a little bit, but I decided to go ahead anyway, and I guess I was a little bit too anxious to get orders, so at the start I would take orders for 10 or 15 coins from a single person. The dealers did not warm up to them to start with, but finally they sent in orders, and I let some of them have 25; let one of them for instance have 25, and another one have 25, and a few more got less than that. Later I refused to increase their quotas. Then orders began to come in pretty fast, and I began to hold them down. If I had not been scared at the start I would have been able to furnish every collector in the United States, as well as in foreign countries, from those 10,000 coins. As it was I ran short about 1,000 coins. It was because, as I say, I got a little bit worried. One man wrote in on an association's stationery and said he had been authorized-it was by the Kansas City Club-to get 50 coins to pass around among their members. I had no reason to doubt his letter, and so I cashed his check and accepted his order. But a week later I got a letter from the secretary of the club saying he had been authorized to get them, and when I told him about the other man he said that other man was in bad repute and had no right to get them from me."