1854-O Three-Dollar Gold Piece. Winter-2. MS-61+ (NGC).

This is an important and highly desirable condition rarity from the inaugural year of three-dollar gold production. Frosty surfaces exhibit tinges of pale apricot tinting to otherwise vivid light orange-gold color. Direct viewing angles also reveal modest semi-reflective tendencies in the fields that are liveliest in the protected areas around the devices. Said devices are also uncommonly sharp in strike for the issue to include a well pronounced O mintmark. Combining awesome condition rarity with strong eye appeal, this impressive piece will certainly have no difficulty finding its way into an advanced Southern gold collection or three-dollar set. The New Orleans Mint struck 24,000 examples for circulation in the first year of the three-dollar gold series, the facility's only contribution to this denomination. And circulate these coins did, both locally and in trade. Today only 1,000 examples are estimated to exist, with most of the survivors in the VF range. EF specimens are scarce and in great demand, and AU examples are about as fine as today's collectors can hope to obtain. The present piece is among the finest certified and certainly also among the finest known. Though the 1854-O represents the only three-dollar gold issue from our nation's southernmost mint, further coinage of this denomination at New Orleans was considered. Six dated dies for an 1855-O coinage were sent to New Orleans from the Mint in Philadelphia but never utilized. Dies for three-dollar gold production were also sent to New Orleans in 1856, 1859 and 1861, but no coinage for the denomination was forthcoming in any of those years.

PCGS# 7971. NGC ID: 25M5.

From the Dr. William M. Aden Collection.