By Paul M. Green - Numismatic News

The 1930-S Indian Head eagle is a low mintage date that is far tougher than even its mintage would suggest. It’s a classic case. The 1930-S probably was melted in large numbers in the Gold Recall Order of 1933.

To really understand the 1930-S, we have to go back further. After 1916, gold coin mintages with the exception to a degree of double eagles became much less regular. There was a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that in most of the country people were content with bank notes.

They probably wanted to have gold sitting in a vault somewhere backing up their notes, but pieces of paper were a lot easier to cart around than a couple ounces of gold. In addition, with the world turning away from the gold standard, the need for large numbers of gold coins was not really present. The United States had plenty of gold coins sitting in vaults, so the few mintages there were probably reflected a local need at the time.

San Francisco should have been the center of gold coin demand, but prior to the 1930-S, the last San Francisco gold eagle production had been 126,500 pieces produced back in 1920.