Welcome back to today's deep dive learner. Imagine
just holding a four dollar coin right in the
palm of your hand. A four dollar coin. That just
sounds wrong right off the bat. It really does.
But you know imagine it's unusually heavy. It's
made mostly of gold. And on the front instead
of a majestic eagle or a presidential portrait
it has this bizarre literal recipe stamped right
into the metal. Oh wow. Yeah. So our mission
today is to explore a fascinating, slightly scandalous,
and completely obsolete piece of American history.
We are pulling all of this from a really detailed
Wikipedia article on something called the Stella.
It was a canceled United States $4 coin from
way back in 1879. I mean, I want you to look
at the spare change just sitting on your desk
or, you know, rattling around in your pocket
right now. We totally take it for granted. Absolutely.
It's just change. Right. But imagine if those
simple coins carried the heavy weight of international
diplomacy or, well, fueled congressional hypocrisy
and eventually became the exclusive glittering
jewelry of madams running Washington, D .C.'s
underground red light district. OK, let's unpack
this because I mean, a $4 coin. To even understand
why a $4 denomination would exist, which, let's
be honest, sounds like a prank today, we have
to look at the global ambition of the late 1870s.
Yeah, it was a very different world. Right. And
if you were a merchant back then, international
trade was just a nightmare of conversions, wasn't
it? Oh, it was incredibly inefficient. I mean,
think about the physical reality of money in
1879. We aren't a... We aren't swiping credit
cards. No, Apple Pay? Exactly. Wealth is moving
in literal heavy bags of metal on steamships
and trains. If an American traveled to Paris,
their US dollars were completely useless to a
French baker. Right, they wouldn't take them.
No. You had to go to an exchange agent, hand
over your American gold, and pay a premium to
swap it for French francs. Every single time
money crossed a border, you lost value. Which
introduces us to this guy, John A. Casson. He's
the mastermind behind the Stella. He was a former
chairman of the House Committee on Coinage, Weights,
and Measures. And Casson looks at this mess and
decides the U .S. needs to join something called
the Latin Monetary Union, the LMU. Yes, the LMU.
And when I was reading the source, the LMU sounded...
It basically sounded like an early draft of the
year. That is exactly the perfect way to conceptualize
it. It was an agreement primarily between France,
Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. Just a big financial
pact. Right. They made this brilliant pact to
mint their national coins to a specific shared
standard of weight and precious metal content.
So a French franc and a Swiss franc look different
on the surface, but structurally, they were identical.
So you just spent them anywhere in those countries.
Exactly. Cassand wanted the United States in
on that action. He urged the production of these
pattern coins prototypes essentially at the Philadelphia
Mint in 1879 and 1880 to prep for this. But wait,
I have to push back on the math here. If the
goal is to seamlessly match European currency,
why invent a brand new four dollar coin? I mean,
why not just tweak the $5 gold piece we already
had? Well, what's fascinating here is that the
$4 value wasn't arbitrary at all. It was dictated
entirely by the European benchmark. Oh, really?
Yeah. The anchor of the LMU was the standard
European gold piece, mostly the 20 franc Napoleon.
Casson did the math, and the intrinsic gold value
of that 20 franc coin was equivalent to exactly
four US dollars. OK, so it was a one -to -one
translation. Right. So an American could, in
theory, travel to Geneva, hand over a $4 Stella,
and a local merchant would accept it instantly
because the metal matched their standard. OK,
so the Stella is basically a $4 ticket to Europe.
It's a prototype pitched to Congress. But despite
this beautiful utopian vision of perfect financial
harmony, the U .S. Mint actually completely botched
the execution. Oh, spectacularly botched it.
It's almost funny. You have to remember the entire
diplomatic premise of the coin is to perfectly
match the LMU standard, right? Right. If it doesn't
match, it's useless. Let's look at the exact
numbers. What was the standard they needed to
hit? Okay, so the standard LMU gold piece was
exactly 6 .45 grams total. It had 5 .81 grams
of fine gold, and the finest of purity was 0
.900 zero. Okay, let me just lock that in. 6
.45 grams total, 5 .81 grams of pure gold, 0
.900 zero purity. That is the Xado bullseye.
What did the U .S. Mint actually make? Well,
the Stella they rolled out weighed seven grams
total. Wait, seven? Yep, seven grams total with
six grams of fine gold, and they dropped the
fineness to 0 .857. It was an alloy of 85 .7
% gold, 4 .3 % silver, and 10 % copper. I just,
I don't understand that at all. The irony is
painful. They created a coin specifically to
standardize currency, and they failed to actually
meet the standard. They made it heavier, added
more gold, and ruined the purity. Why? It was
a clash of philosophies, really. The American
mint was fiercely stubborn. They looked at 6
.45 grams and thought, well, that's a messy number.
So they just rounded up. Pretty much. They wanted
clean metric numbers. They prioritized a tidy
American spreadsheet over the entire functional
purpose of the coin. A French merchant would
have rejected it instantly because it didn't
match their cash register. Oh, man. Well, here's
where it gets really interesting, because the
mint knew. They can talk to this bizarre, non
-standard recipe, right? But instead of hiding
it, they printed it right on the front of the
coin. It's such a weird choice. It is. If you
look at the front where Lady Liberty is... There's
this string of text looping around using five
pointed stars. It literally reads star six, star
G, star point three, star S, star point seven,
star C, star seven, star G, R, A, M, S, star.
Yeah, to anyone else it looks like a secret code.
Right, but it's not a code. It's a literal nutritional
label. They're spelling out the exact recipe.
Six G is six grams of gold. Point three S is
point three grams of silver. Point seven C is
point seven grams of copper. adding up to seven
grams total. It is incredibly literal. I mean,
imagine pulling a quarter out today and instead
of Liberty, it just says 91 % copper, 8 % nickel
across Washington's forehead. It's entirely utilitarian
on the front, but the reverse, the back of the
coin is completely different. It's super dense
with traditional text. Oh, yeah. What was on
the back? So it has a large central star, which
is actually why it's called the Stella, since
Stella is Latin for star. Oh, that makes sense.
Yeah. And around that star, it says one Stella
and 400 cents. And then on the outer rim, it
says United States of America and four doll.
They really wanted to make sure you knew it was
worth $4. 400 cents, four doll, one Stella. We
get it. Exactly. And they tupped two mottos between
the points of the star. You had the classic e
pluribus unum, out of many, one, but they dropped
in God we trust and added a unique Latin phrase
just for this coin, deo est gloria, meaning to
God is the glory. OK, so let's summarize Cassom's
pitch to Congress. He brings them a coin that
is mathematically wrong, totally incompatible
with Europe, covered in nutritional facts on
the front and packed with redundant labels and
new Latin phrases on the back. Sounds like a
hard sell. Right. So how did Congress actually
react to this pet project? Oh, they rejected
it completely. The prospect of joining the LMU
was dead. The Stella was rejected as legal tender.
Just boom, over. But the story of the physical
coins was far from over. Because before it died,
the Mint produced two different obverse designs
in 1879, right? Yes, two different versions of
Lady Liberty. One with flowing hair designed
by Charles E. Barber and one with coiled hair
designed by George T. Morgan. And the flowing
hair one is the most common, right? Correct.
Barber's flowing hair design is the one that
really becomes the center of the scandal. Yes,
the scandal. I love this part. So Congress publicly
rejects the coin, but privately. Several hundred
restrikes of that barber flowing hair design
were quietly produced and sold to the congressmen
themselves at the exact cost of production. If
we connect this to the bigger picture of Washington
in the Gilded Age, the hypocrisy is just staggering.
It's unbelievable. They look at the American
public and say, no, this currency is a bad idea.
But then they turn around and buy up these rare
solid gold prototypes on the cheap for their
own private collections. And they didn't just
put them in display cases. This is where it gets
scandalous. Where did these dignified pattern
coins end up? Well, you have to look at how lobbying
worked back then. Right, it wasn't just in boardrooms.
No, a lot of political maneuvering happened in
these high -end parlor houses, brothels run by
very powerful madams. And the ultimate fate of
a lot of these Stella's, they ended up as jewelry,
literally swinging from the necklaces of madams
operating some of Washington DC's most infamous
bordellos. It perfectly exposes the reality of
the time. You have this high -minded political
theory on one hand, and then the gritty, corrupt
reality on the other. It's amazing. I mean, for
a madam to wear that around her neck, it wasn't
just a pretty necklace. Oh, no. It was a massive
flex. It was a receipt. It proved to anyone looking
that she had members of Congress coming to her
establishment. That is just incredible. But while
that bordello scandal is amazing, there's another
legacy here for the coin collectors, the numismatists.
Because these things are extremely rare today.
Very rare. Out of the entire project, only 425
examples of the Stella were ever made. Wow, 425
total. Yeah, and the 1880 versions are where
it gets crazy. Only 25 examples of the 1880 Quinns
are known to exist. Just 25 in the whole world.
But wait, as rare as that is, there's actually
an even rarer offshoot. The 1879 quintuple Stella.
Ah, yes! the quintuple Stella. So if the Stella
was $4, how did a $20 version differ? Well, $20
back then was a huge amount of gold, and they
only ever produced five of these patterns, just
five. Yeah, and they used a modified version
of the standard Liberty Head, the cornet design
that was on the double eagle coins at the time.
But did they keep the weird nutritional label?
They did. They completely committed to it. They
just scaled up the metric composition. So the
front replaced the stars with star 30, star G,
and so on. Wait, 30 G. So 30 grams of gold? Exactly.
30 grams of gold, 1 .5 grams of silver, and 3
.5 grams of copper. 35 grams total. That is hilarious.
They just multiplied the recipe by five and stamped
it on. And they kept the unique motto, too. They
replaced, in God we trust, with D -E -O -S to
Gloria. Wow. It's just wild how these surviving
pieces, whether it's a coiled hair morgan, a
bordello -worn barber re -strike, or one of those
five quintuple stellas, think completely transformed,
didn't they? They really did. They went from
being a failed, frankly incompetent political
experiment to these legendary numismatic artifacts.
So we've gone from Cassin's dream of a unified
global currency to a mathematically flawed seven
gram gold piece, all the way to a token of political
scandal swinging from the necks of DC Madam's.
What a journey. Right. So what does this all
mean for you, the learner? I think it shows that
sometimes the most valuable things we look back
on aren't the ones that succeeded flawlessly.
The things that endure are often the spectacular
dramatic failures because they show us how human
and messy history really is. I agree. And I have
a final thought for you to ponder. The Stella
was meant to physically connect the U .S. to
Europe, but it just became this secret currency
of corruption for Washington's elite. Today,
we're talking about entirely new kinds of experimental
money like digital currencies. If a completely
new untraceable, or experimental currency were
handed out to politicians today at cost. What
kind of unintended hidden economy would it create
tomorrow? Wow, that is, yeah, that's a thought
to keep you up at night. History definitely echoes,
doesn't it? But thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. We hope you enjoyed exploring
the scandalous, very flawed reality of the Stella
as much as we did. Keep questioning the history
in your pocket and we'll see you next time.