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Thank you to all of my first 500 subscribers. To celebrate, here is a video about the Three Dollar Gold Piece.

This video focuses on the Three Dollar Gold Piece. The coin was designed by James B. Longacre, who also designed the Indian Head Cent and numerous other coins.

This series is especially rare – the highest mintage was in 1854, with only 138,618 coins struck. The lowest mintage was in 1881, with 500 coins struck. This is not including the unique 1870-S, which is part of the Bass Foundation Collection and can be seen in my video “Quarter Eagles and $3 Gold Pieces – Harry W. Bass, Jr. Collection at the ANA Money Museum”. Needless to say, every date and mintmark combination in this series is classified as scarce or above.

The 1870-S Three Dollar Gold Piece is unique – there are no other ones in any collection. The coin was sold in a B&R auction in October of 1982 and sold for $687,500 in EF-40. Today, the Red Book estimates the price of the coin, in EF, to be about $6,000,000.

The denomination was minted from 1854 to 1889. They were struck at Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dahlonega, and New Orleans.

The coin was authorized for striking by the Act of February 21, 1853.

Here is a quote from the straight from the Red Book –
“Today, some numismatists theorize that the $3 denomination
Would have been useful for purchasing postage stamps of the day (with their face value of 3 cents) or for acquiring 100 silver three-cent pieces (“trimes”), which were also in circulation at the time.”

Visit my youtube channel to see all of my numismatic videos – Click here