By Doug Winter – www.raregoldcoins.com

In my opinion, Type One double eagles have become popular enough with collectors that it is time for some of the more interesting varieties in this series to come into their own.

I am beginning to notice that these varieties are growing in popularity and that prices are beginning to appreciate as well.

What are the most significant varieties in the series, how rare are they and what sort of price premium do they merit?

1852/1852 Double Date:

This variety is one of the most obvious double dates that I have seen on a United States gold coin. It can easily be detected with the naked eye due to the heaviness of the date. The original date was punched slightly too high and then corrected with a second full punch placed slightly below.

In the last three years I have looked at over one hundred 1852 double eagles and fewer than ten have been of this variety. Nearly all have been in lower grades (EF45 and below) and I do not believe that I have ever seen an 1852 double date double eagle in Uncirculated.

This variety is recognized by NGC but it is not currently recognized by PCGS. I think it should sell for a 25-50% premium over a normal date 1852 and the premium in AU55 and higher grades should be even more than this. (more…)

By Doug Winter – www.RareGoldCoins.com

So you’ve made the decision that you are going to collect a specific series. What are the next step(s) that you should take?

If you are going to form a serious, high-end collection one of the first things that you need to do is to examine comparable collections. As an example, if you have decided to assemble a set of Liberty Head eagles, it would make sense to know the grades of other sets that have been put together.

When it comes to 19th century gold, some of the old stand-bys are the Norweb, Eliasberg and Bass collections. It is very instructive to compile lists of the coins in these three collections as they pertain to what you are planning to collect yourself. For example, if you have decided to assemble a set of high grade New Orleans half eagles, you can make a spreadhseet of the relavent coins in these three collections.

Luckily, this information is reasonably easy to access. (Thank you, Internet…) On the PCGS website, the Set Registry pages list the “probable” grades of the Eliasberg and Bass gold coins (not to mention another pretty decent set, that found in the Smithsonian). The grades of the coins in the Norweb collection can be found in the three sales of this collection that were conducted by Bowers and Merena back in the mid-1980’s.

Knowing what quality coins were owned by a great collection is important informantion for a new collector. As an example, let’s sat you are being offered an MS63 example of a specific Liberty Head eagle. If the best piece Bass owned was an MS61 and Eliasberg only had an AU55, then the chances are good that this is a significant coin.

There are exceptions to this rule, however. Let’s say that the MS63 Liberty Head eagle mentioned above is from a small hoard that was discovered after Bass or Eliasberg stopped actively buying coins. In this situation, the significance of the Bass and Eliasberg holdings are not as great. An example of this would be an 1894-O eagle in MS63. This date was essentially unknown in Uncirculated when Eliasberg was buying and very few examples better than MS60 were available to Bass. Today, because of hoards found overseas, this issue is scarce but not impossible to find in MS63. (more…)

By Len Augsburger from The E-Gobrecht January 2009 Volume 5 Issue 1

An engraving clearly derived from the Great Seal of the United States appears in “The Children in the Wind,” a book published byWarner and Hanna in Baltimore in 1806. The connection to Christian Gobrecht lies in the fact that Gobrecht supplied and signed other engravings in this volume.

This particular engraving is unsigned, but Gobrecht seems a likely candidate. Other engravings on the book are alternately signed “C. Gobrecht”, “C G,” or “Gobright,” suggesting that Gobrecht considered using an Anglicized spelling of his last name.

Still other engravings, as this one, are unsigned. Gobrecht executed other engravings for Warner and Hanna during this period and appears to have had an ongoing relationship with the firm prior to his move to Philadelphia, c. 1815.