Lot 1510
1864-S $10 Liberty. VF-20. Cleaned and retoned with medium gold color around the rims and darker highlights close to the devices. Smooth, even wear and without heavy bagmarks or other problems. A blip of 2,500 were struck, with perhaps 20 that survived to today. PCGS has graded 16 coins, with duplications and resubmissions, perhaps there are only 12 or so. None were found on the S. S. Brother Jonathan shipwreck and its unlikely that any more are laying around in some cigar box, waiting for numismatic discovery. In the massive Harry Bass sale, only a single VF-35 duplicate was offered, not a whole lot better than this coin. One of the rarest dates of the entire series, and one that deserves a high bid.
Now that the S.S. Central America gold is finally being sold, what sort of effect will that have on the coin market, and gold coins in general? We believe that many new collectors will focus on the gold issues from this gold rush period. Enough coins will finally be available, but they will primarily be 1857-S double eagles and a few eagles of that year. Massive press coverage will further promote coins from this era, and collector interest will increase dramatically. However; there won't be an increase of coins of the surrounding dates, and they will remain just as rare and unavailable. The public interest in the gold bars and territorial issues will also be tremendous, as that type of issue will be widely available to the collecting public for the very first time. As further evidence, ask any dealer how many phone calls they received about the 1943 copper cent that was supposedly "spent" by a collector last year. With national press coverage, every coin dealer was swamped with dozens of calls daily about that coin, and prices for the available 1943 copper cents have increased dramatically whenever they cross the auction block. With evidence such as this, we can only expect that on rare gold coins demand will be dramatically increased, while supply remains painfully thin of these Civil War issues.
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| Realized $3,450 |
