Top 10 Coins from Heritage's Long Beach Sale May 2008Below are the Top 10 coins sold in the recent Heritage Long Beach, CA Signature sale. Prices realized include Buyers Premium.
1. 1808 $2 1/2 MS61 NGC - $163,875.00The rarity of the 1808 quarter eagle is well known even to those who do not necessarily collect gold type coins. Struck in just this one year, only 2,710 pieces were minted and of that number it has been estimated that fewer than 2% exist today in all grades, with 35-40 pieces being a reasonable estimate of the surviving specimens. Breen speculates that the low survival rate may be due to the weak borders on all known coins which exposed them to undue wear. Every 1808 quarter eagle we have seen has had rim problems of some sort, probably due to the lack of raised detail evident around the margins. Also, all known examples show a die crack that extends from the cap through all six stars at the right.
Breen also points out that the date and letter punches used on the 1808 quarter eagle were reused on 1809 dimes. However, the bust and device punches were never reused. Typical for all of
John Reich's designs, the 13th star is notched, a "signature" of the short-lived German immigrant-engraver.
2. 1794 $1 VF30 PCGS - $161,000.00When David Rittenhouse took over the responsibility as the Mint's first Director, he had a twofold task to accomplish. The first was to begin production of silver coins, especially silver dollars, that would compare favorably in weight to the widely circulated Spanish (Carolus) dollars. Second, the coins had to present well. The dollars from 1794 all show varying degrees of weakness and misalignment because they were struck on a press meant for smaller coins. This weakness was noticed at the time of issue, but attributed to shallow engraving. But the experimentation had just begun with silver dollars, and in the next year the 1795 dollars show much coarser hair and heavier design elements on the reverse.
Even though all 1794 dollars were struck from misaligned dies, obvious attention was paid to the manufacture of these coins. Of the 125+ pieces known, there are five die states. This is a Die State III piece and is characterized by light relapping of the obverse die to lessen the clash marks that apparently occurred just after the first coins were struck. This is the most frequently seen die state and Martin Logies identified 84 different specimens from this state.
3. 1891-O 25C Specimen MS65 NGC - $161,000.00The special nature of this coin has been recognized since at least 1941 when it appeared in Mehl's Dunham Sale. It has passed from one specialist to another since then, always remaining in strong hands and rarely offered to the numismatic market. The obvious reason for striking this piece, as well as the other known branch mint proof, was "resumption of coinage of this denomination at New Orleans (interrupted 1860)," as stated in Breen (1977).
It is always interesting to compare and contrast branch mint proofs with those produced in Philadelphia. It appears that employees in the branch mints were not familiar with the day-to-day striking of proofs. Rather, when called upon to strike such coins, they produced pieces that they thought resembled the proofs that were regularly turned out of the mother mint in Philadelphia. And in most cases, they did an admirable job of emulating Philadelphia proofs.
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Posted 06/01/2008 1:21 pm
