WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.419 Welcome back to today's deep dive learner. Imagine 00:00:03.419 --> 00:00:05.759 just holding a four dollar coin right in the 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:08.160 palm of your hand. A four dollar coin. That just 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:10.339 sounds wrong right off the bat. It really does. 00:00:10.699 --> 00:00:12.960 But you know imagine it's unusually heavy. It's 00:00:12.960 --> 00:00:16.140 made mostly of gold. And on the front instead 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:19.640 of a majestic eagle or a presidential portrait 00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:24.379 it has this bizarre literal recipe stamped right 00:00:24.379 --> 00:00:27.300 into the metal. Oh wow. Yeah. So our mission 00:00:27.300 --> 00:00:30.899 today is to explore a fascinating, slightly scandalous, 00:00:31.100 --> 00:00:33.240 and completely obsolete piece of American history. 00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:36.899 We are pulling all of this from a really detailed 00:00:36.899 --> 00:00:39.439 Wikipedia article on something called the Stella. 00:00:39.799 --> 00:00:43.159 It was a canceled United States $4 coin from 00:00:43.159 --> 00:00:45.719 way back in 1879. I mean, I want you to look 00:00:45.719 --> 00:00:47.859 at the spare change just sitting on your desk 00:00:47.859 --> 00:00:49.579 or, you know, rattling around in your pocket 00:00:49.579 --> 00:00:51.460 right now. We totally take it for granted. Absolutely. 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:53.479 It's just change. Right. But imagine if those 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.619 simple coins carried the heavy weight of international 00:00:55.619 --> 00:00:58.679 diplomacy or, well, fueled congressional hypocrisy 00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:01.479 and eventually became the exclusive glittering 00:01:01.479 --> 00:01:04.060 jewelry of madams running Washington, D .C.'s 00:01:04.060 --> 00:01:06.379 underground red light district. OK, let's unpack 00:01:06.379 --> 00:01:11.530 this because I mean, a $4 coin. To even understand 00:01:11.530 --> 00:01:15.090 why a $4 denomination would exist, which, let's 00:01:15.090 --> 00:01:17.769 be honest, sounds like a prank today, we have 00:01:17.769 --> 00:01:20.650 to look at the global ambition of the late 1870s. 00:01:20.650 --> 00:01:22.849 Yeah, it was a very different world. Right. And 00:01:22.849 --> 00:01:25.170 if you were a merchant back then, international 00:01:25.170 --> 00:01:27.549 trade was just a nightmare of conversions, wasn't 00:01:27.549 --> 00:01:30.090 it? Oh, it was incredibly inefficient. I mean, 00:01:30.150 --> 00:01:32.430 think about the physical reality of money in 00:01:32.430 --> 00:01:35.730 1879. We aren't a... We aren't swiping credit 00:01:35.730 --> 00:01:38.969 cards. No, Apple Pay? Exactly. Wealth is moving 00:01:38.969 --> 00:01:41.930 in literal heavy bags of metal on steamships 00:01:41.930 --> 00:01:44.549 and trains. If an American traveled to Paris, 00:01:44.969 --> 00:01:47.370 their US dollars were completely useless to a 00:01:47.370 --> 00:01:48.930 French baker. Right, they wouldn't take them. 00:01:49.069 --> 00:01:51.310 No. You had to go to an exchange agent, hand 00:01:51.310 --> 00:01:53.870 over your American gold, and pay a premium to 00:01:53.870 --> 00:01:56.189 swap it for French francs. Every single time 00:01:56.189 --> 00:01:58.890 money crossed a border, you lost value. Which 00:01:58.890 --> 00:02:01.829 introduces us to this guy, John A. Casson. He's 00:02:01.829 --> 00:02:04.209 the mastermind behind the Stella. He was a former 00:02:04.209 --> 00:02:06.310 chairman of the House Committee on Coinage, Weights, 00:02:06.409 --> 00:02:09.409 and Measures. And Casson looks at this mess and 00:02:09.409 --> 00:02:12.569 decides the U .S. needs to join something called 00:02:12.569 --> 00:02:16.189 the Latin Monetary Union, the LMU. Yes, the LMU. 00:02:16.250 --> 00:02:18.810 And when I was reading the source, the LMU sounded... 00:02:19.210 --> 00:02:21.110 It basically sounded like an early draft of the 00:02:21.110 --> 00:02:23.530 year. That is exactly the perfect way to conceptualize 00:02:23.530 --> 00:02:27.430 it. It was an agreement primarily between France, 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:30.849 Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. Just a big financial 00:02:30.849 --> 00:02:33.750 pact. Right. They made this brilliant pact to 00:02:33.750 --> 00:02:36.729 mint their national coins to a specific shared 00:02:36.729 --> 00:02:38.969 standard of weight and precious metal content. 00:02:39.490 --> 00:02:41.849 So a French franc and a Swiss franc look different 00:02:41.849 --> 00:02:44.069 on the surface, but structurally, they were identical. 00:02:44.330 --> 00:02:45.810 So you just spent them anywhere in those countries. 00:02:46.110 --> 00:02:48.620 Exactly. Cassand wanted the United States in 00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:50.939 on that action. He urged the production of these 00:02:50.939 --> 00:02:53.400 pattern coins prototypes essentially at the Philadelphia 00:02:53.400 --> 00:02:57.500 Mint in 1879 and 1880 to prep for this. But wait, 00:02:57.919 --> 00:02:59.960 I have to push back on the math here. If the 00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:02.599 goal is to seamlessly match European currency, 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:06.919 why invent a brand new four dollar coin? I mean, 00:03:07.219 --> 00:03:09.560 why not just tweak the $5 gold piece we already 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:11.439 had? Well, what's fascinating here is that the 00:03:11.439 --> 00:03:14.199 $4 value wasn't arbitrary at all. It was dictated 00:03:14.199 --> 00:03:16.780 entirely by the European benchmark. Oh, really? 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:20.259 Yeah. The anchor of the LMU was the standard 00:03:20.259 --> 00:03:23.599 European gold piece, mostly the 20 franc Napoleon. 00:03:23.960 --> 00:03:27.020 Casson did the math, and the intrinsic gold value 00:03:27.020 --> 00:03:29.500 of that 20 franc coin was equivalent to exactly 00:03:29.500 --> 00:03:32.039 four US dollars. OK, so it was a one -to -one 00:03:32.039 --> 00:03:34.300 translation. Right. So an American could, in 00:03:34.300 --> 00:03:37.300 theory, travel to Geneva, hand over a $4 Stella, 00:03:37.840 --> 00:03:39.840 and a local merchant would accept it instantly 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:42.939 because the metal matched their standard. OK, 00:03:42.979 --> 00:03:45.860 so the Stella is basically a $4 ticket to Europe. 00:03:46.099 --> 00:03:49.120 It's a prototype pitched to Congress. But despite 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:52.199 this beautiful utopian vision of perfect financial 00:03:52.199 --> 00:03:55.939 harmony, the U .S. Mint actually completely botched 00:03:55.939 --> 00:03:58.479 the execution. Oh, spectacularly botched it. 00:03:58.719 --> 00:04:00.740 It's almost funny. You have to remember the entire 00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:02.900 diplomatic premise of the coin is to perfectly 00:04:02.900 --> 00:04:05.819 match the LMU standard, right? Right. If it doesn't 00:04:05.819 --> 00:04:08.020 match, it's useless. Let's look at the exact 00:04:08.020 --> 00:04:09.800 numbers. What was the standard they needed to 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:13.000 hit? Okay, so the standard LMU gold piece was 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:17.660 exactly 6 .45 grams total. It had 5 .81 grams 00:04:17.660 --> 00:04:20.220 of fine gold, and the finest of purity was 0 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:23.040 .900 zero. Okay, let me just lock that in. 6 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:27.980 .45 grams total, 5 .81 grams of pure gold, 0 00:04:27.980 --> 00:04:31.500 .900 zero purity. That is the Xado bullseye. 00:04:32.120 --> 00:04:34.459 What did the U .S. Mint actually make? Well, 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:36.420 the Stella they rolled out weighed seven grams 00:04:36.420 --> 00:04:38.939 total. Wait, seven? Yep, seven grams total with 00:04:38.939 --> 00:04:41.019 six grams of fine gold, and they dropped the 00:04:41.019 --> 00:04:44.759 fineness to 0 .857. It was an alloy of 85 .7 00:04:44.759 --> 00:04:48.079 % gold, 4 .3 % silver, and 10 % copper. I just, 00:04:48.079 --> 00:04:50.079 I don't understand that at all. The irony is 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:52.699 painful. They created a coin specifically to 00:04:52.699 --> 00:04:54.459 standardize currency, and they failed to actually 00:04:54.459 --> 00:04:56.459 meet the standard. They made it heavier, added 00:04:56.459 --> 00:04:59.160 more gold, and ruined the purity. Why? It was 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:00.980 a clash of philosophies, really. The American 00:05:00.980 --> 00:05:03.000 mint was fiercely stubborn. They looked at 6 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.399 .45 grams and thought, well, that's a messy number. 00:05:05.459 --> 00:05:07.740 So they just rounded up. Pretty much. They wanted 00:05:07.740 --> 00:05:11.139 clean metric numbers. They prioritized a tidy 00:05:11.139 --> 00:05:13.699 American spreadsheet over the entire functional 00:05:13.699 --> 00:05:16.459 purpose of the coin. A French merchant would 00:05:16.459 --> 00:05:18.600 have rejected it instantly because it didn't 00:05:18.600 --> 00:05:21.040 match their cash register. Oh, man. Well, here's 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:23.000 where it gets really interesting, because the 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.579 mint knew. They can talk to this bizarre, non 00:05:26.579 --> 00:05:29.300 -standard recipe, right? But instead of hiding 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:31.420 it, they printed it right on the front of the 00:05:31.420 --> 00:05:34.259 coin. It's such a weird choice. It is. If you 00:05:34.259 --> 00:05:39.060 look at the front where Lady Liberty is... There's 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:41.100 this string of text looping around using five 00:05:41.100 --> 00:05:43.839 pointed stars. It literally reads star six, star 00:05:43.839 --> 00:05:46.240 G, star point three, star S, star point seven, 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:49.319 star C, star seven, star G, R, A, M, S, star. 00:05:49.420 --> 00:05:51.420 Yeah, to anyone else it looks like a secret code. 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:53.579 Right, but it's not a code. It's a literal nutritional 00:05:53.579 --> 00:05:55.459 label. They're spelling out the exact recipe. 00:05:56.139 --> 00:05:58.779 Six G is six grams of gold. Point three S is 00:05:58.779 --> 00:06:01.800 point three grams of silver. Point seven C is 00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:04.379 point seven grams of copper. adding up to seven 00:06:04.379 --> 00:06:06.579 grams total. It is incredibly literal. I mean, 00:06:06.579 --> 00:06:08.379 imagine pulling a quarter out today and instead 00:06:08.379 --> 00:06:11.519 of Liberty, it just says 91 % copper, 8 % nickel 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:14.920 across Washington's forehead. It's entirely utilitarian 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:17.720 on the front, but the reverse, the back of the 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:19.759 coin is completely different. It's super dense 00:06:19.759 --> 00:06:22.399 with traditional text. Oh, yeah. What was on 00:06:22.399 --> 00:06:24.899 the back? So it has a large central star, which 00:06:24.899 --> 00:06:27.000 is actually why it's called the Stella, since 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.480 Stella is Latin for star. Oh, that makes sense. 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:32.120 Yeah. And around that star, it says one Stella 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:35.300 and 400 cents. And then on the outer rim, it 00:06:35.300 --> 00:06:37.860 says United States of America and four doll. 00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:40.319 They really wanted to make sure you knew it was 00:06:40.319 --> 00:06:44.550 worth $4. 400 cents, four doll, one Stella. We 00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:48.009 get it. Exactly. And they tupped two mottos between 00:06:48.009 --> 00:06:50.910 the points of the star. You had the classic e 00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:54.449 pluribus unum, out of many, one, but they dropped 00:06:54.449 --> 00:06:57.829 in God we trust and added a unique Latin phrase 00:06:57.829 --> 00:07:02.769 just for this coin, deo est gloria, meaning to 00:07:02.769 --> 00:07:05.689 God is the glory. OK, so let's summarize Cassom's 00:07:05.689 --> 00:07:08.149 pitch to Congress. He brings them a coin that 00:07:08.149 --> 00:07:10.490 is mathematically wrong, totally incompatible 00:07:10.490 --> 00:07:12.490 with Europe, covered in nutritional facts on 00:07:12.490 --> 00:07:14.550 the front and packed with redundant labels and 00:07:14.550 --> 00:07:16.850 new Latin phrases on the back. Sounds like a 00:07:16.850 --> 00:07:19.490 hard sell. Right. So how did Congress actually 00:07:19.490 --> 00:07:21.930 react to this pet project? Oh, they rejected 00:07:21.930 --> 00:07:24.529 it completely. The prospect of joining the LMU 00:07:24.529 --> 00:07:27.670 was dead. The Stella was rejected as legal tender. 00:07:27.889 --> 00:07:30.709 Just boom, over. But the story of the physical 00:07:30.709 --> 00:07:34.029 coins was far from over. Because before it died, 00:07:34.310 --> 00:07:36.870 the Mint produced two different obverse designs 00:07:36.870 --> 00:07:40.250 in 1879, right? Yes, two different versions of 00:07:40.250 --> 00:07:42.980 Lady Liberty. One with flowing hair designed 00:07:42.980 --> 00:07:46.120 by Charles E. Barber and one with coiled hair 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:48.160 designed by George T. Morgan. And the flowing 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:50.259 hair one is the most common, right? Correct. 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:52.319 Barber's flowing hair design is the one that 00:07:52.319 --> 00:07:54.720 really becomes the center of the scandal. Yes, 00:07:54.899 --> 00:07:58.279 the scandal. I love this part. So Congress publicly 00:07:58.279 --> 00:08:02.149 rejects the coin, but privately. Several hundred 00:08:02.149 --> 00:08:04.050 restrikes of that barber flowing hair design 00:08:04.050 --> 00:08:06.129 were quietly produced and sold to the congressmen 00:08:06.129 --> 00:08:08.870 themselves at the exact cost of production. If 00:08:08.870 --> 00:08:11.529 we connect this to the bigger picture of Washington 00:08:11.529 --> 00:08:15.069 in the Gilded Age, the hypocrisy is just staggering. 00:08:15.230 --> 00:08:16.850 It's unbelievable. They look at the American 00:08:16.850 --> 00:08:18.829 public and say, no, this currency is a bad idea. 00:08:18.870 --> 00:08:21.050 But then they turn around and buy up these rare 00:08:21.050 --> 00:08:24.029 solid gold prototypes on the cheap for their 00:08:24.029 --> 00:08:26.829 own private collections. And they didn't just 00:08:26.829 --> 00:08:29.639 put them in display cases. This is where it gets 00:08:29.639 --> 00:08:32.919 scandalous. Where did these dignified pattern 00:08:32.919 --> 00:08:35.580 coins end up? Well, you have to look at how lobbying 00:08:35.580 --> 00:08:38.019 worked back then. Right, it wasn't just in boardrooms. 00:08:38.440 --> 00:08:40.580 No, a lot of political maneuvering happened in 00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:43.460 these high -end parlor houses, brothels run by 00:08:43.460 --> 00:08:46.159 very powerful madams. And the ultimate fate of 00:08:46.159 --> 00:08:49.259 a lot of these Stella's, they ended up as jewelry, 00:08:49.960 --> 00:08:52.820 literally swinging from the necklaces of madams 00:08:52.820 --> 00:08:55.919 operating some of Washington DC's most infamous 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:59.409 bordellos. It perfectly exposes the reality of 00:08:59.409 --> 00:09:01.470 the time. You have this high -minded political 00:09:01.470 --> 00:09:04.169 theory on one hand, and then the gritty, corrupt 00:09:04.169 --> 00:09:06.730 reality on the other. It's amazing. I mean, for 00:09:06.730 --> 00:09:09.070 a madam to wear that around her neck, it wasn't 00:09:09.070 --> 00:09:11.210 just a pretty necklace. Oh, no. It was a massive 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:13.669 flex. It was a receipt. It proved to anyone looking 00:09:13.669 --> 00:09:15.789 that she had members of Congress coming to her 00:09:15.789 --> 00:09:18.629 establishment. That is just incredible. But while 00:09:18.629 --> 00:09:21.830 that bordello scandal is amazing, there's another 00:09:21.830 --> 00:09:24.710 legacy here for the coin collectors, the numismatists. 00:09:25.400 --> 00:09:28.100 Because these things are extremely rare today. 00:09:28.299 --> 00:09:31.720 Very rare. Out of the entire project, only 425 00:09:31.720 --> 00:09:35.100 examples of the Stella were ever made. Wow, 425 00:09:35.100 --> 00:09:37.360 total. Yeah, and the 1880 versions are where 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:40.840 it gets crazy. Only 25 examples of the 1880 Quinns 00:09:40.840 --> 00:09:43.340 are known to exist. Just 25 in the whole world. 00:09:43.799 --> 00:09:46.779 But wait, as rare as that is, there's actually 00:09:46.779 --> 00:09:50.779 an even rarer offshoot. The 1879 quintuple Stella. 00:09:51.240 --> 00:09:54.710 Ah, yes! the quintuple Stella. So if the Stella 00:09:54.710 --> 00:09:58.230 was $4, how did a $20 version differ? Well, $20 00:09:58.230 --> 00:10:00.929 back then was a huge amount of gold, and they 00:10:00.929 --> 00:10:03.450 only ever produced five of these patterns, just 00:10:03.450 --> 00:10:06.269 five. Yeah, and they used a modified version 00:10:06.269 --> 00:10:08.509 of the standard Liberty Head, the cornet design 00:10:08.509 --> 00:10:10.570 that was on the double eagle coins at the time. 00:10:10.669 --> 00:10:12.450 But did they keep the weird nutritional label? 00:10:12.789 --> 00:10:14.610 They did. They completely committed to it. They 00:10:14.610 --> 00:10:16.769 just scaled up the metric composition. So the 00:10:16.769 --> 00:10:19.750 front replaced the stars with star 30, star G, 00:10:19.809 --> 00:10:22.870 and so on. Wait, 30 G. So 30 grams of gold? Exactly. 00:10:23.070 --> 00:10:26.629 30 grams of gold, 1 .5 grams of silver, and 3 00:10:26.629 --> 00:10:30.269 .5 grams of copper. 35 grams total. That is hilarious. 00:10:30.350 --> 00:10:32.309 They just multiplied the recipe by five and stamped 00:10:32.309 --> 00:10:34.490 it on. And they kept the unique motto, too. They 00:10:34.490 --> 00:10:37.850 replaced, in God we trust, with D -E -O -S to 00:10:37.850 --> 00:10:40.970 Gloria. Wow. It's just wild how these surviving 00:10:40.970 --> 00:10:43.509 pieces, whether it's a coiled hair morgan, a 00:10:43.509 --> 00:10:45.970 bordello -worn barber re -strike, or one of those 00:10:45.970 --> 00:10:49.639 five quintuple stellas, think completely transformed, 00:10:49.659 --> 00:10:51.379 didn't they? They really did. They went from 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:54.159 being a failed, frankly incompetent political 00:10:54.159 --> 00:10:57.919 experiment to these legendary numismatic artifacts. 00:10:57.940 --> 00:11:00.820 So we've gone from Cassin's dream of a unified 00:11:00.820 --> 00:11:04.179 global currency to a mathematically flawed seven 00:11:04.179 --> 00:11:08.240 gram gold piece, all the way to a token of political 00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:11.000 scandal swinging from the necks of DC Madam's. 00:11:11.019 --> 00:11:13.539 What a journey. Right. So what does this all 00:11:13.539 --> 00:11:15.639 mean for you, the learner? I think it shows that 00:11:15.639 --> 00:11:17.480 sometimes the most valuable things we look back 00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:19.480 on aren't the ones that succeeded flawlessly. 00:11:19.940 --> 00:11:22.120 The things that endure are often the spectacular 00:11:22.120 --> 00:11:24.899 dramatic failures because they show us how human 00:11:24.899 --> 00:11:27.639 and messy history really is. I agree. And I have 00:11:27.639 --> 00:11:29.899 a final thought for you to ponder. The Stella 00:11:29.899 --> 00:11:31.919 was meant to physically connect the U .S. to 00:11:31.919 --> 00:11:34.440 Europe, but it just became this secret currency 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:36.960 of corruption for Washington's elite. Today, 00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:40.259 we're talking about entirely new kinds of experimental 00:11:40.259 --> 00:11:43.440 money like digital currencies. If a completely 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:46.950 new untraceable, or experimental currency were 00:11:46.950 --> 00:11:50.129 handed out to politicians today at cost. What 00:11:50.129 --> 00:11:53.110 kind of unintended hidden economy would it create 00:11:53.110 --> 00:11:55.610 tomorrow? Wow, that is, yeah, that's a thought 00:11:55.610 --> 00:11:57.470 to keep you up at night. History definitely echoes, 00:11:57.490 --> 00:11:59.129 doesn't it? But thank you so much for joining 00:11:59.129 --> 00:12:01.590 us on this deep dive. We hope you enjoyed exploring 00:12:01.590 --> 00:12:04.529 the scandalous, very flawed reality of the Stella 00:12:04.529 --> 00:12:06.610 as much as we did. Keep questioning the history 00:12:06.610 --> 00:12:08.350 in your pocket and we'll see you next time.