I'm going to cut to the chase on this one. In my humble opinion, there are 4 very romantic periods in our nations fabulous history; the Revolutionary War period, Civil War period, Wild West period and the combined times of the Great Depression and WW II. This item came to us recently from an estate. It sold several years ago at Greg Martin Auctions in San Francisco for over $30,000.00. It is a wonderful, near mint piece of Historical Americana that can hardly be improved upon. It smacks of the Wild West. This is an outstanding cane with solid gold handle that is inscribed on one side, "B. J. Hull, Entered Employ, Wells Fargo & Co. Express, 1856". On the reverse is a wonderfully engraved freight wagon with very tiny letters that say "Wells Fargo & Company Express" on the wagon's body. Above the wagon is engraved, "Drivers" and below the wagon, "Christmas, 1882". Hull was obviously employed by Wells Fargo from near the very beginning of their illustrious Western History. I would imagine that he started at the bottom of the totem pole and worked his way up through the organization and probably had the respect of the presenters. No history came with the cane and I don't know if its ever been researched. What I do know is that this is a very important artifact and one of the very few that has association with the Wild West in its heyday from the gold fields of California in the 1850's through the migration Westward and the Indian Wars. It was my good fortune to be offered this cane at a very low price before I ever made an offer, and I have no problem making a small mark-up and passing the savings on to a good customer. Wells Fargo Artifacts are extremely rare. To find one with a presentation is next to impossible. If no one calls to buy this in a few weeks, I'll keep it. Within 2 days of posting this cane on the website, one of my customers found that Hull started as a driver for Wells Fargo in 1856 and worked his way up to supervisor. In 1882, he was still working for WF and living in Sacramento with his wife. We expect further research is to be completed soon.