Golden Present

Memories of Gold Dollars for the Holidays

- R.W. JULIAN

When I was growing up in the early 1940s, my maternal grandfather gave me a silver dollar each Christmas.I still have these, in memory of him. When I was a teenager, and after my grandfather had died, I made inquiries among my older cousins if they had been treated the same. The answer was yes, and no.

In fact, the older cousins had bee gi each Christmas a silver dollar, but before 1933 — when gold was call in — they had been presented with a gold dollar. I saw several of these coins, one cousin having more than a dozen of them. It was a pleasant tradition, one that can never again happen. In the 1950s, I made inquiries among older neighbors, and they too had been given gold dollars at Christmas before 1933. Othe s had been given silver dollars, indicating how widespread a dollar coin’s practice at Christmas had been.

HISTORIC ACCIDENT BRINGS HAPPINESS

Little known outside collecting circles today, in some ways, the gold dollar of 1849–1889 was a historical accident, something that never should have been. Even though the public used it for a few years in the 1850s, after that time, it was rarely seen and served mainly as presents to friends and relatives.

The immediate cause of this curious little coin was the California Gold Rush of 1848–1849. Many men dreamed of making their fortunes in far-off California, and by the tens of thousands, they abandoned jobs and families t h d f El Dorado. And some of this came from the area surrounding t city of Charlotte in North Carolina.