ANA - Discover a rare piece of Colorado gold rush history with Tom Hallenbeck, past president of the American Numismatic Association, during the 2024 National Money Show in Colorado Springs. Tom highlights a Clark Gruber & Co. $20 gold piece from 1861, minted during the Colorado Gold Rush. With only around a dozen known and valued at over $250,000, this rare coin is a treasure from Colorado's past. Learn about its unique design, featuring the inscription 'Pikes Peak,' and its importance in early Colorado coinage before the U.S. Mint was established. This is a fascinating chapter of Colorado's rich gold rush legacy!
Clark, Gruber & Co. produced around $600,000 worth of gold coins between 1860 and 1861, mostly in two-and-a-half-dollar to ten-dollar denominations. In the Colorado district surrounding Pike's Peak, Clark, Gruber gold pieces were a mainstay of trade. Their quality allowed banks and merchants to accept them at full value with ease. Clark, Gruber gold pieces tested contained gold equivalent to or slightly above face value, according to a July 1861 U.S. Mint assay report. In order to account for loss from wear in circulation, the company produced coins with around 1% more gold than face value during its years of manufacturing. By 1862, the company stopped making gold coins and started shaping the gold dust it had acquired into bars and ingots.
These days, it is uncommon to find twenty-dollar Clark, Gruber & Co. gold pieces. Coinage dated 1861 had a Liberty Head motif on the obverse with a reverse eagle that was strikingly similar to the federal double eagle, while those produced in 1860 used the well-known stylized representation of Pike's Peak. Though instances of this latter issue are still uncommon in all grades, they are marginally more common than the 1860 coin. Only two 1861 pieces—one a VF Details coin that needed repair work and the other an AU Details piece that needed cleaning—have been handled by us in the past ten years. Both coins were featured in our Dallas Signature in September 2020.
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Posted 07/07/2025 2:41 pm
Uncirculated American Silver Eagles 
