Are 1930-S Saints Overshadowed?

Saint Gaudens double eagles, $20 coins, are the most popular gold coins. Both in the coin collecting community and in the general news media, Saints get more attention than any other gold coins.

It is the series in general, heavily promoted common dates like the 1924 and 1928, or the rarest dates, that are talked about. Saints dated 1930-S are extremely rare coins, yet never seem to get much media attention. Though not as rare as 1930-S Saints, 1931-D Saints are very rare, and are also ignored by everyone but dedicated collectors.

Indeed, they are both way overshadowed by the rarest dates in the series which make the front pages and are even occasionally seen on television! When the Fenton 1933 Saint was auctioned in New York in 2002, there were more than five hundred people in attendance and television crews were filming. Each sale of a 1927-D also gets extensively covered.

A 1930-S Saint, and also two 1931-D Saints, will be offered on Feb. 16 in the fifth session of Heritage's auction in conjunction with the Long Beach (CA) coin, stamp, and collectible expo.

All three of these coins are authenticated, graded “MS-64,” and encapsulated by the Professional Coin Grading Service, of Newport Beach, CA. Unfortunately, I have not yet seen them.

This 1930-S and one of the two 1931-D Saints are part of the Matt and Susan Brown family collection of business strike Saints. Business strikes are coins that were manufactured by normal or typical methods rather than being specially prepared to 'show off' minting techniques. They still may 'show off' designs.

Though missing the rarest dates, the Brown family has several scarce and rare dates in their collection of mostly choice, uncirculated Saints. Their set is not far from being complete. Though I have not seen their coins, my preliminary impression is that they put time and effort into building an appealing collection.

I did recently see the very attractive plus 1930-S that was in John Kutasi's collection. Kutasi had the fourth “all-time finest” set of business strike Saints in the PCGS set registry. Two or three never registered sets are probably finer.

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