In 1787, Ephraim Brasher, a goldsmith and silversmith, submitted a petition to the State of New York to mint copper coins. The petition was denied when New York decided not to get into the business of minting copper coinage. Brasher was already quite highly regarded for his skills, and his
hallmark (which he not only stamped on his own coins but also on other coinage sent to him for
assay proofing) was highly appreciated by the United States. Brasher struck various coppers, in addition to a small quantity of gold coins, over the next few years. This coin, valued at eight
Spanish escudos or sixteen
Spanish dollars ($16), is of confusing English colonial nomenclature, called at first the "double doubloon" before settling as the "Spanish doubloon". This was disambiguated in references by calling the $4 the
common doubloon or simply
doubloon, and the $16 coin the
doubloon of eight (escudos).
Spanish America did the same as explained in
:es:doblón. One of the surviving gold coins, weighing and composed of 0.917 (22-
carat) gold, was sold at a public auction for $625,000 in March 1981. $2,990,000 for the unique New York Style EB Punch on Breast NGC XF45 and $690,000 for the rare but less iconic Lima Style Doubloon. The unique Brasher Doubloon, the first gold coin made for the United States, was sold in December 2011 by rare-coin dealer,
Steven L. Contursi of Laguna Beach, California, to Certified Acceptance Corporation (CAC) of Far Hills, New Jersey. An undisclosed Wall Street investment firm subsequently purchased it from Blanchard and Company of New Orleans, Louisiana for nearly $7.4 million, it was the most money ever paid for a coin minted in the United States. This record was broken by a Brasher Doubloon sold in January 2021 by Heritage Auctions for $9.36 million, a world record for a gold coin sold in a public auction. The coin was the subject of
Raymond Chandler's
Philip Marlowe 1942 mystery novel
The High Window, and
John Bellairs's 1992
The Mansion in the Mist, as well as in
Lavie Tidhar's 2018 middle-grade mystery
Candy. ==See also==