Douglas Winter Numismatics - Type One Liberty Head eagles were made for circulation from 1850 through 1866 at the Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco mints. Including the enigmatic Paquet reverse designs from Philadelphia and San Francisco, there are a total of 46 issues, as follows:
Philadelphia: 1850-1865; a Total of 20 Issues With the Following Varieties
1853: regular date and so-called 1853/'2' overdate
1854: small date and large date
1861: regular issue and Paquet reverse
New Orleans: 1850-1861; a Total of 12 Issues With No Major VarietiesSan Francisco: 1854-1866; a Total of 14 Issues With the Following Varieties 1861: regular issue and Paquet reverse
Type One issues run the gamut from extremely common to extremely rare. Nearly every issue (other than the 1856-S, 1857-S and 1861) is rare in any Uncirculated grade higher than MS62 and a number of issues are nearly impossible to locate in any Uncirculated grade.
It is not easy to choose the "best" dozen individual issues from this type as there are a number of very important coins known. I've decided to focus on business strikes (any Type One double eagle Proof is very rare) and on coins which aren't from shipwrecks. Even still, it was difficult to name just a dozen individual coins. It is likely that I will revisit this topic in the near future and write on a second dozen great Type One twenties.
1. 1850 PCGS MS65 
This coin isn't one of my favorite pieces on this list due to its quality for the assigned grade. While I like the coin a lot, I don't think it's a full-blown Gem. But this coin is very important for what it represents: the single highest graded example of this popular first-year-of-issue Type One double eagle.
I first saw this coin when it sold for $161,000 as an NGC MS65 in the Heritage 2007 FUN auction. It crossed to a PCGS MS65 within the last few years, and it is clearly among the more desirable type coins of this design.
Interestingly, there is an 1850 double eagle (which I have viewed in-person through a glass display case) which is finer than this coin. It is in the Vienna Kunsthistoriches Museum and I graded it MS65++ when I saw it in 2018.
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Posted 09/04/2020 6:31 pm
