In 1787, two years before the Constitution established a national mint, states were experimenting with minting coins of their own. Expert in gold coins Ephraim Brasher produced a small number of gold "doubloons" in a U.S. coin style as proofs for the state of New York. Seven have turned up over the past two hundred years, found in various places from the Mint's to-be-melted bouillon pile to a Philadelphia sewer, but all have been in the hands of professional collectors since. That is, except for the DuPont Doubloon, which was stolen at gunpoint from the DuPont estate in 1967, and turned up six months later taped to the leg of a wife-beating criminal who got his just deserts.
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