Silver Dollar a special find for Downtown Coin Club

Once upon a time in India, a 1921 Morgan Silver Dollar graced the neck of a United States Army Airman, who wore the currency as a memento during his service overseas.

From the moment Dan Wilson and Chuck Price saw the silver dollar, they knew right away that they were looking at a piece of history.

Wilson and his wife, Trish, own Downtown Coin at 111 W. Telegraph Street in Carson City and founded the Downtown Coin Club. Wilson has seen a lot of antique coins come his way over the years. But the silver dollar bearing the inscription of one Captain William Buxton was something special.

“It’s probably the only one we’ve come across with this kind of military significance,” Wilson said.

According to Price, Sergeant-At-Arms of the Downtown Coin Club, the silver dollar once belonging to Lt. Col. William Buxton of the United States Army Air Corps was sold to the club by one of its members. That club member had purchased the antique coin from another club member who had bought it as an oddity fifteen years ago, Price said.

With personal inscriptions on each side, and a hole drilled into the top, the coin’s face value is worth little more than the market price for silver these days, Price said. But that’s not the point with a piece like this.

The intrinsic value of Buxton’s silver dollar memento is priceless. So, too, is its place in Americana.

“There is an historic value to this coin,” Price said, as well as sentimental value to anyone connected with Buxton.

That’s what convinced Wilson and Price to begin what would become a year and a half long effort — including 14 months of research — to get the coin back home where it belonged.

“I wanted to put the coin with the right people,” Wilson said.

So the Downtown Coin Club of Carson City, comprised predominantly of military veterans, set out on a mission to reunite Buxton’s silver dollar with either the Lt. Colonel or his family.

Historical research showed that then-Captain William Buxton served in India during World War II as commander of the 1st Air Commando Group to the U.S. Army Air Corps between 1942 and 1944.

The back side of the coin bears the inscription “India 1942,” which is consistent with Buxton’s service. Below Buxton’s name on the front of the coin is his service serial number much like the information a standard issue dog tag might contain. The hole drilled into the top of the coin was meant for a chain so the bearer could wear the currency around his neck as a sort of memento. This practice, according to Price, was common among service men during World War II.

Wilson and Price sought the assistance of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for help in locating Lt. Col. William Buxton. None were able to provide information as to Buxton’s whereabouts.

Then the club contacted both U.S. Senator Dean Heller’s office and the office of Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval for help. Those contacts discovered that Buxton retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and had passed away in 1974. His wife died in 1999. The couple had one daughter, Mary, but details about her were even more vague, Price said.

The last known address for Buxton’s daughter was a post office box in Needles, California.

That’s where Wilson and Price searched next. With the help of an article written by a reporter at the Needles Desert Star newspaper, they were eventually contacted by a Needles resident who tipped them to a woman named Mary living at a housing complex in town.

Unfortunately, Mary’s legal last name was not known, and neither the housing manager nor the welfare department could disclose personal information. Wilson and Price’s last effort in Needles was to enlist the help of the local sheriff’s office. But it, too, could not identify the Mary they were tipped about as Mary Buxton.

At that point, the club’s board of directors decided to donate the historic coin memento to the U.S. Army Air Corps Museum in Dallas, Texas, where it could be displayed alongside other World War II era artifacts.

“The best thing about where it’s going is that hopefully all of our work (of researching the Buxton family) will come to fruition,” Wilson said, and a surviving family member may eventually come forward.

But the story of the Buxton silver dollar isn’t going to stop there, Price said. The museum’s director told the club that the coin will be taken on tour around the United States as part of a traveling historical display of World War II militaria.

“In our hearts we know we did the right thing,” Price said of donating the coin to a military museum.

Fittingly, perhaps, Lt. Col. Buxton’s silver dollar memento will be displayed in a place of honor much like it originally had been around the Army veteran’s neck once upon a time in India.