Mintage: four. Certified population: three. Availability: scarce. Desirability: priceless. Our blog series covers quite the heavy hitter this go around as we continue our journey following along with Whitman Publishing's fourth edition of the 100 Greatest United States Coins. Author Jeff Garrett leads us through why this gold coin has made such an impact on numismatics.
#34 – 1838 Proof Liberty Head Eagle
Early gold coinage, while highly sought after by collectors today, proved to be quite the learning curve that came with a fair number of hiccups. One of those hiccups came in the form of an inaccurate relative value rate of silver to gold. Congress originally formulated this rate at 15 to 1. It was found that this rate should have been more like 16 to 1, which resulted in early United States gold coins being melted and sold or more than its face value in terms of silver. That is, in large part, why gold coins from early minting days are rare.
With the inaccurate rate came the suspension of production of $10 gold coins from the United States Mint in 1804. It was not until 1834 when the Coinage Act of 1838 would revive the denomination after reducing the weight of gold coins. This deterred collectors from melting them down. Christian Gobrecht was tasked with creating new dies for the $10 gold coin and later that year, coinage began.
In early December of 1838, four Proof specimens of the $10 eagle were given to the Treasury secretary. Three of those examples are known to still exist today. One lives at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the National Numismatic Collection, one came from King Farouk's collection that was sold in 1954 and found its way to auction in 1998 (sold for $550,000), and one (Gem Proof) is in private hands.
The $10 eagle series is considered long lived as it ran from 1838-1907. Garrett classifies the denomination as a workhorse in U.S. gold production, further emphasizing why the 1838 is truly a rarity.
Historic market value in Choice Proof condition was estimated at $5,000 in 1960. By this fourth edition (2015), it rose to $1.5 million.
