Eckfeldt, Jacob
Born in Philadelphia, son of Adam Eckfeldt. Married Emily M. Levering October 19, 1835. Father of Frederick, Jacob Bausch Eckfeldt and John Wiegand Eckfeldt.
Appointed Assayer of the U. S. Mint April 30, 1832. He held this position for more than forty years.
Author with W. E. Du Bois of A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations in 1842. Author of New Varieties of Gold and Silver Coins in 1851.
Following his death Eckfeldt was honored on the reverse of the 1873 Assay Commission medal (Julian AC-12). The 33 mm medal had dies by William Barber.
bio: ApCAB; Evans; Stewart obit: AJN 7 Oct 1872 Page 47
6 entries found
Displaying records 1 — 6A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of all Nations
"A treatise on coins," write the authors, "which does not present a picture of them, is but half fitted for its purposes." Yet a decade before the numismatic boom of the 1850s, it was obvious that coin books needed to be picture books. The first chapters of this work concentrate on technical specifications of world gold and silver coinage, a subject near and dear to Eckfeldt and DuBois as assayers of the U. S. Mint. But the real fun starts in chapter six, when Joseph Saxton's steam-powered medal ruling machine is put to work on electrotypes produced from Mint cabinet specimens, most notably an 1804 dollar. The results were remarkable for the time, especially as Saxton's contraption automated the entire process. Sixteen plates are included in all, two with American content. Another prize is the frontispiece, an image of the second United States mint, produced using the daguerreotype, electrotype, and Saxton's medal ruler - a trio of the latest technology. That one of the first American daguerreotypes was executed by Saxton himself, peering out of the same building, in 1839, only heightens the sense of promise of illustrative science that Eckfeldt and DuBois captured for posterity. Voted #79 of the top one hundred items of numismatic literature by the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
New Varieties of Gold and Silver coins (1850)
A followup volume to the 1842 work by the same authors (A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of all Nations), this book describes developments in gold and silver coinage in the preceding decade, including California discoveries, Mormon gold, and various foreign pieces. The most valuable copies retain the California gold samples that were mounted on p. 45.
Memoranda (in Newman's hand) in the Newman papers notes:
A portion of the 1850 edition is reprinted in the September 1850 issue of Bankers Magazine, vol. 5, pp. 193-202. Most of the 1851 edition including the Pledges of History (by Du Bois only) is reprinted in the September, October, November, and December 1851 issues of Bankers Magazine, vol. 6 (Boston 1852), pp. 175-191; pp. 314-321; 322-323; 337-360; 432-453; Table & 5 plates are also in the January 1852 issue.
New Varieties of Gold and Silver Coins (1852)
A second edition of the 1850 work of the same title, this book notably includes an addendum that constitutes an updated version of the 1846 volume "Pledges of History," an early account of the formation and contents of the Mint Cabinet.