This lustrous deep yellow-gold gem has frosty surfaces that display a wealth of cartwheel and pools of satiny brilliance. Warm olive iridescence adds to the exceptional eye appeal. The strike is bold for the date with nearly complete tips to Miss Liberty’s ostrich plume headdress, and with only a modicum of reverse weakness at the bow. From a lapped state of the die with the leaf left of the date thin and somewhat tenuous. On the portrait side we see a small patch of tiny marks beneath STA in the field, and a tiny peck immediately after the final S of STATES. On the date side there are two tiny pecks beneath the 1 and 8 of the date. There is an area of natural planchet surface at the rim from 2:00 to 5:00, somewhat grainy in appearance and only visible with a loupe. We note a tiny die artifact at the lower curve of the ball on the second 5 of the date. This is a truly remarkable example, the finest graded by PCGS. Considered especially elusive in Mint State, the 1855 Indian Princess $3 is especially rare in any grade approaching gem. The mintage for the 1855 $3 was 50,555, with only one pair of dies used for the entire coinage run. In the 1880s, when mintages were much lower, many collectors scrambled to buy $3 coins, with the result that Mint State coins can be easily found. In 1855 the coins and medals of Pierre (“Peter’) Flandin, a collector who had been active since the 1820s, were sold by Bangs, Merwin in New York City. Numismatic historians consider this auction to be among the most important held before coin collecting became widely popular later in the decade. PCGS# 7972. NGC ID: 25M6.
