Raymond Chandler’s “The High Window” revolves around a stolen coin called the Brasher doubloon. The coin was no fiction. Nicknamed for its creator, Ephraim Brasher, one of 18th-century New York’s leading jewelers, his gold pieces illustrate America’s monetary chaos after the Revolution.

Lacking the power to finance the war through taxation, Congress and the 13 colonies instead printed piles of paper money, denominated in dollars or pounds, shillings, and pence, all of which soon became nearly worthless. One British pound sterling was worth £1,000 in Maryland currency and a Spanish silver peso, 40 Continental paper dollars. Nor did the colonies’ monies circulate at par. One New Hampshire shilling was worth nearly 5 South Carolina shillings. One couldn’t go to the corner store without a pocket exchange table.

The Articles of Confederation did not authorize a mint. Hence, small change was an insufficient mixture of foreign, state, and privately issued copper coins. Nearly everyone accepted the big, handsome Spanish silver pesos or milled dollars, which, from their denomination of eight reales, were called “pieces of eight.” Private merchants and vendors issued their own small change: advertising tokens resembling the familiar British pennies with images of George Washington, Indian warriors, and even King George. Congress feebly tried to alleviate the coin shortage by declaring nails legal money – even today, nails are still classified in terms of pennies: 1,000 three-penny nails weigh three pounds.

Neither the paper money nor the foreign coins were legal tender, which one had to accept in payment of a debt. Commerce thus became a form of barter based on intrinsic value, the weight and fineness of a coin’s precious metal content. Thus, someone selling a horse might gladly accept 80 silver pesos while refusing its equivalent of $3,200 in congressionally authorized paper money.

In 1787, New York’s legislature solicited petitions – today, we’d call this a request for proposals, or RFP – for a franchise to provide copper coins. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont had been awarded such franchises. The successful petitioner’s profit would come from seignorage, the difference between a coin’s face value and its intrinsic value as metal. Brasher was among the numerous petitioners. By then in his mid-40s, he was renowned as an honest, skilful craftsman in gold and silver. George Washington bought a set of silver from Brasher, who was the president’s next-door neighbor at 5 Cherry St. Customers trusted Brasher to weigh and verify foreign gold coins, which he then stamped with his initials in an oval. Brasher’s good reputation made coins with his stamp more certain to pass in trade as having intrinsic value.

Although the legislature chose not to award a franchise to any petitioner, Brasher was involved with his business associate, John Bailey, in producing a successful coinage in 1787: the privately-issued Nova Eborac pennies, so-called because they bore the words NOVA EBORAC, Latin for New York. On the obverse was a male bust in Roman armor with a laurel wreath on its head. The reverse bears Liberty seated with a branch in one hand and a Liberty pole in the other with a shield leaning against her thigh. These images’ resemblance to those of King George III and Britannia on contemporary British pennies was intentional: It made the coins comfort ably familiar to users. Handsome coins of satisfying weight, they circulated for many years.

But 1787 also saw Brasher strike the coins for which he is remembered. He modeled his gold pieces on Spanish doubloons – 16 peso pieces about the size of a modern half dollar. The obverse of Brasher’s coins bears New York State’s arms, the sun in splendor rising in an unclouded sky behind a mountain range, with the jeweler’s name in small capitals just below the shield, all encircled by a wreath of oak leaves. Between the wreath and the coin’s edge appear NOVA EBORAC, COLUMBIA, and the state’s motto, EXCELSIOR (“Ever Upward”). On the reverse is a heraldic eagle bearing the shield of Union, encircled by beading. Outside the beading is a quirky version of the national motto, UNUM E PLURIBUS, and the date.

After striking each coin, perhaps from force of habit, Brasher stamped his initials on the reverse. After all, his stamp guaranteed the coin was of proper weight. Unlike the Nova Eboracs, the doubloons never circulated widely, if at all. Some scholars claim they were patterns – working models – never intended for daily use. Whatever they may have been, the public noticed them, long after Brasher’s death in 1810; one turned up in a bag of coins bound for melting in 1838. Seven doubloons have been found. The last sold at public auction went for $725,000 in 1979.

In 1947, Chandler’s novel was made into a B movie, “The Brasher Doubloon,” starring George Montgomery as Philip Marlowe. The book is better.