Smithsonian discovers not all that glitters is old gold

WASHINGTON - After two years of study, scientists say a gold bar on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is a fraud.

The nearly 5-ounce ingot was thought to have been made in 1857 by the Justh & Hunter company in Marysville, Calif. But researchers said it's more likely the bar dates only to the 1950s.

"It's not the end of the world," said Douglas Mudd, manager of the Smithsonian's huge National Numismatic Collection. Numismatics is the study or collection of coins.

"It's important, but it doesn't affect the fact that it's an interesting piece and it's important for the museum to have it either way," Mudd said.

Bob Evans, a geologist and numismatic researcher from Ohio, conducted the investigation with Nevada geologists Fred Holabird and David Fitch. Results of their work will be published today in Numismatist, the journal of the American Numismatic Association.

Although outside experts appraise and authenticate the items donated to the Smithsonian, it is not unusual for a fake ingot or gold coin to make its way into a display. "Every museum in the world, every numismatic collection, contains counterfeits and duplicates," Mudd said.

Lawrence J. Lee, curator of the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum in Colorado said there are plenty of phonies out there, some of them in museums.

"When someone does a Mona Lisa imitation, they do one," he said. But with ingots and gold coins, "the sheer number of counterfeits is much, much higher."

If the ingot is fake, Mudd said, the museum will keep it on display so researchers can study it - and identify possible other phonies made by the same person.

"One of our purposes is that we're a research collection, and a museum is about the only place where you can house collections of fakes and counterfeits to form a benchmark for study," he said.

The scientists used new technology to study the chemistry of the ingots. Evans said they also compared the questionable Smithsonian bar and genuine ingots recovered from an 1857 shipwreck.

The S.S. Central America sank off the North Carolina coast, carrying tons of gold coins and ingots. Evans was the lead scientist on the 1980s project that found and recovered the treasures and provided the real ingot for the study.

Evans said the ingot at the Smithsonian has the words, "Justh & Hunter assayers" stamped on it. The genuine bar, he said, has only "Justh & Hunter" on it.

The fake ingot had a date and location of the manufacturer on it; the real ones do not have those markings.

The ingots at the Smithsonian are part of a private collection donated to the museum in the late 1960s by pharmaceuticals executive Josiah K. Lilly.

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