Which Gold Double Eagle To Get?

To me, Saints are nice but boring...like Morgans. Try to acquire one of each Liberty Double eagle, Type I (1850-1865), Type II (1866-1876) and Type III (1877-1907).

Out of the two the st gaudens is the nicer design, easily available, and not that much expensive over melt. Granted Aron has a point in maybe trying to assemble a type set of sorts of the Liberty double eagle type 1,2,3. This will take time and money but it'll be a nice investment. Now the question to ask is are you buying raw coins or certified?

Get the best early S or CC you can afford.

Since the person here who is asking for advice is probably on a budget, I think that the calls for him to buy one of each of the early types or a Carson City piece are misplaced.

The St. Gaudens type is readily available in Choice Mint State (MS-64), and might be a nice "starter coin." It was the first coin I bought when I was starting out in 1965. The Liberty type is harder to find nice, and would MUCH HARDER were it not for the 1904, which is a super common date.

If you want to "go exotic" an 1876-S in AU is an affordable alternative. That coin is a type II Liberty which is different on the reverse from the 1904 which is a Type III Liberty.

Here is one I bought many years ago and had slabbed by NGC. Given the ways of "grade-flation" a recently slabbed AU-58 might not look as good these days. This will be harder to find. You can buy a common date St. Gaudens double eagle from many sources.



And here is an 1861, Type I, which I bought years ago. I think that the prices have gone up on these because of the Civil War date, despite the fact that it's a very common date.



Strictly Uncirculated early double eagles are very expensive, but the AU-58s have been a lot more reasonable in price.

Edited to ADD Whatever you do, buy am NGC or PCGS certified example. DO NOT by a raw coin. Getting stuck with a counterfeit is not fun at all and the slab provides you protection from that.

I narrowly favor the St. Gaudens, which is the less expensive of the two to find with good "look".

I was thinking of something like this 1865-S in XF45

http://www.brokencc.com/modules.php...od_id=149988

Or this 1856-S in AU53

http://www.brokencc.com/modules.php...od_id=156339

cc's start at 2-3x times that as a straight grade, even for the common 1874-76 dates.