Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

I’ve starting working on the third edition of my Dahlonega gold coin book. One of the first things I’m doing in looking at PCGS and NGC population figures in order to help establish overall and comparative rarity levels for each issue from this mint.

I’ll be writing an occasional article about each denomination as I get there. Instead of writing long, drawn-out studies, I thought it would be best to sub-divide the categories and, thus, have chosen to limit my current blog to just Type One dollars.

Looking strictly at the total number of coins graded by the two services, I believe that the rarity estimates I made in the first and second editions of my books were low; in some cases way too low. But I also believe that the number of resubmissions for Dahlonega gold dollars is extremely high. Generally speaking, small coins tend to be graded a bit more subjectively than large coins and since Dahlonega gold dollars can have big spreads between AU58 and MS61 or MS62 and MS63, it makes sense that many high end coins would be graded again and again.

Let’s look at each of the Type One Dahlonega gold dollars and try to make sense of the PCGS/NGC numbers.

1849-D: In my last book I estimated that there were 250-300+ examples known. Given the fact that PCGS and NGC have a combined population of over 500 coins, my estimate seems very low. The actual number extant is probably more like double my original estimate; perhaps even a bit higher. What’s amazing about the PCGS and NGC populations for this issue is how high they skew on the grading scale. As an example, PCGS has graded a total of 235 1849-D gold dollars. Of these, only 56 (or slightly less than 24%) grade EF45 or below. The most incredible statistic is that NGC has graded 110 of 283 1849-D gold dollars they have recorded in MS60 or above. This works out to nearly 40% (!). The grades that appear most inflated for this issue are AU58 and MS62. (more…)