xcopperstax
Silver Member
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2018
- Messages
- 2,508
- Reaction score
- 4,873
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- Location
- Massachusetts
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett AT Max
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I have a spot near me that I have hunted multiple times. I have found more silver there than any one spot since I began hunting. That's not to say a lot of silver as my collection is pretty small. For some reason it's never high on my list of spots to go. I gave it another go after work the other day and found a religious pendant right off the bat. A hole or two later I found a little holed disk. As I cleaned it I saw Chinese characters and the words "Hong Kong" written around the edge and thought it was some kind of touristy item. As I rubbed it a little more a date of 1866 showed and it turned out to be a ten cent coin with Queen Victoria on the front! Victorian Silver! I knew nothing about the coin so I did some research on the coin and the area where I found it. I can only speculate on how the coin made it to its resting place but I'll give it a try....
The Forbes family from Massachusetts made it's fortune by trading with China in the 1800's. If you think you haven't heard of them think politician John Forbes Kerry. They traded many goods but one of the things they traded that sticks out was opium. Opium was smoked back then and it is pretty similar to the opiate pills that are a problem today. As we now know opium is highly addictive but back then it was in all sorts of patent medicines (snake oil) and some stuff was even recommended for infants... which strangely resulted in infant deaths. Opium was brought into China by the ton causing millions to become addicted and led to millions of deaths. It wasn't just the Forbes they were a small player in it, it was mainly the British East India company who had been there since the 1600's. At first they were there to trade but as the companies power grew it became a huge part of the British economy and they weren't about to let a few million lives get in the way of some astronomical profits. The emperor of China tried to stop the flow of opium by demanding and pleading that it's shipment cease but the benevolent British refused. The Chinese confiscated and destroyed the opium. It was time for the British army to take action. This led to two "opium wars" that eventually left the British with control of Hong Kong. I'm still not sure why they needed to mint coins in Hong Kong but I'm sure if facilitated trade with the Chinese. The coins probably worked like a U.S. Trade dollar.
Anyway back to Massachusetts:
Robert Bennet Forbes had made his fortune off of Opium trading. Note: over here there were the patent medicines and there was also things like morphine that eventually addicted hundreds of thousands of soldiers who fought in the civil war and needed pain killers. Back to Forbes: he wanted to do some good in the world and created a home for sailors who had no one to care for them after the war. These sailors were given a place to live out their lives. They could come and go as they pleased. Interestingly where I found the coin is an area where they tended fields with a burial ground established solely for civil war sailors in 1866 - coincidentally (?) the same year as the coin! They could be buried there if they had nowhere else to go. The house is gone. The fields are gone. The cemetery is all that remains. Did Bob Forbes drop the coin when he went to visit the home? Was it a sailor's memento from a trip overseas? Only the treasure gods know what really happened. I am so happy to have found this coin with such an interesting history. Thanks for reading.
The Forbes family from Massachusetts made it's fortune by trading with China in the 1800's. If you think you haven't heard of them think politician John Forbes Kerry. They traded many goods but one of the things they traded that sticks out was opium. Opium was smoked back then and it is pretty similar to the opiate pills that are a problem today. As we now know opium is highly addictive but back then it was in all sorts of patent medicines (snake oil) and some stuff was even recommended for infants... which strangely resulted in infant deaths. Opium was brought into China by the ton causing millions to become addicted and led to millions of deaths. It wasn't just the Forbes they were a small player in it, it was mainly the British East India company who had been there since the 1600's. At first they were there to trade but as the companies power grew it became a huge part of the British economy and they weren't about to let a few million lives get in the way of some astronomical profits. The emperor of China tried to stop the flow of opium by demanding and pleading that it's shipment cease but the benevolent British refused. The Chinese confiscated and destroyed the opium. It was time for the British army to take action. This led to two "opium wars" that eventually left the British with control of Hong Kong. I'm still not sure why they needed to mint coins in Hong Kong but I'm sure if facilitated trade with the Chinese. The coins probably worked like a U.S. Trade dollar.
Anyway back to Massachusetts:
Robert Bennet Forbes had made his fortune off of Opium trading. Note: over here there were the patent medicines and there was also things like morphine that eventually addicted hundreds of thousands of soldiers who fought in the civil war and needed pain killers. Back to Forbes: he wanted to do some good in the world and created a home for sailors who had no one to care for them after the war. These sailors were given a place to live out their lives. They could come and go as they pleased. Interestingly where I found the coin is an area where they tended fields with a burial ground established solely for civil war sailors in 1866 - coincidentally (?) the same year as the coin! They could be buried there if they had nowhere else to go. The house is gone. The fields are gone. The cemetery is all that remains. Did Bob Forbes drop the coin when he went to visit the home? Was it a sailor's memento from a trip overseas? Only the treasure gods know what really happened. I am so happy to have found this coin with such an interesting history. Thanks for reading.
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