By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

I realize that the title of this blog sounds like an outtake from the Dukes of Hazzard but I thought it might be an interesting topic to take each branch mint and analyze it in terms of its popularity. Then, for the icing on the proverbial cake, I thought it would also be interesting to name the five or so most in-demand issues from each mint.

Just as an FYI, I am not including Denver among the five branch mints as it is relevant only to 20th century issues and this article is primarily focused on 19th century gold coinage.

1. Dahlonega:

At this point in time, I’d have to rank Dahlonega as the single most popular of the branch mints. I am basing this on the following observation. Dahlonega coins, at least for me, seem to be as easy to sell now as they were a few years ago. There are certainly exceptions to this rule; namely overgraded examples priced in the $10,000+ range, high grade common date gold dollars priced at $10,000 and above and virtually any coin in any price or grade range that is not at least fairly original and appealing. But nice, properly graded and fairly priced D mint remains a best-seller for my firm.

I would have to rank half eagles as the most popular coins from Dahlonega right now, followed closely by quarter eagles. The price range that seems most in-demand is $1,500-5,000 but expensive Dahlonega gold will sell if it is a scarce, popular issue or if the coin is very high end. Coins with good pedigrees are popular right now and this is clearly an area in the market where many collectors are searching for CAC-quality coins.

The Five Most Popular Dahlonega Gold Coins in 2009: 1861-D gold dollar, 1854-D three dollar, 1838-D half eagle, 1839-D half eagle, 1861-D half eagle.
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