Techniques of estimation

Absent from the literature is a review of the techniques of obtaining specie points (loosely, “gold” points). Such a survey is provided here, and a surprisingly large number of techniques are delineated. Every known dollar–sterling specie-point estimate, except those for which the source or method is unstated, falls into one of the categories that follow.

Consult an expert: Obvious experts were foreign-exchange dealers, London bullion brokers, and New York bankers. Parliamentary testimony of merchants was a direct way of obtaining gold-point information (House of Commons, 1810, p. 108; 1847–8, part 1, p. 193; part 3, p. 261). Perkins (1975, pp. 192–5) provides specie-point estimates from the records of the House of Brown for several dates over 1823–59, thus “consulting” a foreign-exchange dealer of the past. The New York Times (July 7, 1895, p. 17; June 17, 1899, p. 7) presents gold points provided by a “house” and “some dealers.” Johnson (1905, pp. 90–1) offers gold-point data “furnished by the representative of one of the largest New York banking houses” and from “another large bullion dealer in New York.”

During the 1925–31 gold standard, The Economist regularly printed the report of Samuel Montagu and Co., a bullion broker, and on three occasions gold-point estimates were contained therein. Long after the fact, Morgenstern (1959, pp. 188, 191, n. 25) obtained gold points for twenty scattered dates over 1926–33 from a New York banker (obvious, though he does not identify the source).