The reverse type, which describes the coin’s weight and its fineness in carats, immediately brings to mind the way the Bechtler coinage was designed. When he first introduced this unique issue to a meeting of the American Numismatic Society (described in the March, 1912 issue of The Numismatist), Samuel H. Chapman also remarked on the similarity between Schaeffer's design and that of the North Carolina Bechtler family’s issues. Edgar Adams, who was present at that ANS meeting, suggested the coin be shown to Professor William E. Hidden (whose collection would shortly afterwards be sold by Elder and the U.S. Coin Co.). Adams remembered Hidden once mentioning an employee of the Bechtlers who had made dies and taken them to California in 1849. When Hidden saw the H. Schaeffer pattern he stated that the H. stood for Heinrich, that Heinrich’s son who was then still living in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, remembered that his father had made a set of dies for coins and that Heinrich had intended setting out for California to join the gold rush then in full swing and mint gold coins from his dies. Heinrich's son further told Hidden that Heinrich Schaeffer had been a witness executor of Alt Christoph Bechtler’s will in 1842. Hidden said that the design of Heinrich Schaeffer’s pattern $5 not only showed “a continuance of the Bechtler ideas,” but that “the old punches (of letters) were used for the Schaeffer dies.” As no gold coins are known to have survived from Schaeffer’s $5 dies, and as the Bechtlers ceased minting coins before gold was discovered in California, the Heinrich Schaeffer pattern $5 represents not only a unique California gold pattern but also the only surviving direct numismatic contact between the gold fields of North Carolina and those of northern California.