About the Piece
In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt was not yet a Rough Rider or president. He was a young New York aristocrat trying to make a life for himself in the Dakota Badlands after the deaths of his wife and mother on the same day. He threw himself into ranching, hunting and the physical demands of the West — but he did not arrive looking like an ordinary plainsman. Roosevelt equipped himself in elaborate buckskins, expensive firearms and a silver-mounted Bowie knife from Tiffany & Co., joking that he looked like a “regular cowboy dandy.” The image was deliberate. Over the following years, the life began to catch up with it.
The knife captures that transition particularly well. A practical frontier blade was given the treatment of a New York luxury object: Roosevelt’s name runs across one side of the handle, while the other carries a frontiersman; deer and bears fill the blade in raised ornament. Spectres recreates the knife itself in silver, preserving the elongated Bowie form and the imagery that made the original such an unusual combination of frontier equipment and Tiffany workmanship. It belonged to Roosevelt before the presidency, before the Rough Riders and before the public figure he would become — during the years he later credited with helping make all of that possible.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Bowie Knife is the second Roosevelt object recreated by Spectres, following his 1909 Hunting Knife and preceding the 1912 Bull Moose Revolver. In Roosevelt’s own life, however, it comes first. Together, the three pieces trace him at three different moments: the young rancher building himself in the Dakota Badlands, the former president leaving office for Africa, and the political insurgent returning to the campaign trail under the Bull Moose banner.
Specifications
What’s Included
- Individually numbered Spectres piece
- Matching numbered Certificate of Authenticity with product specifications
- Custom-designed Spectres presentation box
Every Spectres piece carries the Ghost mint mark.
How is this a coin?
- A coin is defined by its official issuance, not by its physical shape. This piece is formally issued as legal tender by a sovereign issuing authority, with an official denomination and year of issue.
- Money and coinage have also taken unconventional forms throughout history, including ancient Chinese knife- and spade-shaped money. Spectres continues that idea in modern legal tender, where a coin may be round, shaped, functional, sculptural or fully three-dimensional.