What an exceptional way to begin our offering of the D. Brent Pogue Collection of three-dollar gold coins! The frosty and intensely lustrous honey gold surfaces of this gem first-year $3 exhibit a wealth of warm olive iridescence throughout. The luster cascades from rim to rim, enlivening the completely defined design motifs. The obverse is as sharp as ever found for the type with full feather tip details in Miss Liberty’s headdress and full hair details from forehead to shoulder. The reverse is likewise sharp with full details. Even the smallest elements appear crisp and strong throughout – one can count the tiny seeds in the clusters at the top of the reverse wreath if so inclined. Marks of any note are few and far between, and no solitary blemish can be singled out with the unaided eye. We make mention of any and all marks for those who may not get to hold the coin in their hands. The obverse reveals a tiny well-hidden mark, probably as struck, at the upper left serif of the Y in LIBERTY, with a tiny tick at the center of Liberty’s cheek, and two others just as tiny in the field between Liberty’s chin and the U of UNITED. A strong angle to the light source reveals two faint hairlines in the field near Liberty’s nose. The reverse is even more pristine with only a threesome of tiny surface ticks in the field near the lower left of the 3 in the denomination. One of the most incredible Indian Princess $3 coins of any date is about to cross the block. Considering its superior quality and its compelling importance as a coin for a type set, we expect strong bidding on this beautiful first year of issue gold coin. The present piece is a “+” finer than the Richard Jewell coin American Numismatic Rarities sold in March 2005 as lot 610, certified Mint State-67 by PCGS. Our most recent offering that came even remotely close to the quality of the Pogue Collection coin was in our November 2013 Baltimore auction where we sold a NGC-certified Mint State-66 example. The vast majority of 1854 $3 gold coins offered in the last decade or so have been EF and AU, with occasional forays into Mint State but seldom graded higher than MS-63. To the best of our knowledge the Mint State-68 specimen listed by PCGS has been absorbed into another gold coin cabinet and it may be some time before it enters the numismatic marketplace again. How it would compare side-by-side with this coin is not known. The 1854 $3 gold issue is a one-year-only design type with the denomination, DOLLARS, in particularly small letters. The mints at Philadelphia, Dahlonega, and New Orleans all struck and issued the $3 denomination in 1854 with the small DOLLARS reverse lettering style. The presses at Charlotte – and later, Carson City – never struck a $3 gold piece of any date, and the freshly opened San Francisco Mint only issued the denomination sporadically beginning in 1855. From 1855 onward until the close of the series in 1889, the word DOLLARS appears in noticeably larger letters. PCGS# 7969. NGC ID: 25M3.
