The 19 different Liberty Head double eagles struck at the Carson City mint between 1870 and 1893 form one of the most popular series in American numismatics.
Imagine, if you will, that the coin market is a sushi bar. You look in the cases and you see the familiar fish: salmon, albacore, mackerel, and regular tuna. Off in the corner, in a special case there is the prized (and pricey) fatty tuna (or Toro) wrapped in special paper and brought out for special customers only. That fish, in our Numismatic Sushi Bar, is Proof Gold: rare, unusual, and very expensive.
Douglas Winter Numismatics, a Portland Oregon firm specializing in choice and rare United States gold coinage, recently sold an outstanding 1796 Eagle graded AU58 by PCGS and approved. The price was in excess of $100,000.
The impetus behind this article was a nice PCGS VG10 1864-S eagle which I recently handled. As I was writing this coin up, I got to thinking that I had handled an uncommonly large number of very low grade examples of this date…
The New Orleans mint produced Liberty Head half eagles from 1840 through 1857 and again from 1892 through 1894. There were a total of 16 different issues constituting three distinct types.
2018 was a decidedly mixed year for the rare coin market. In brief: interesting rare coins performed fairly well to very well, while uninteresting coins performed terribly.
Of the four denominations struck at the Dahlonega mint, half eagles are the largest in size and have—by far—the most struck; both in terms of individual dates and total produced. This denomination was made from 1838 through 1861, and there were a total of 26 issues.
